lament with dollar-store slide whistles

It is absolutely gorgeous here today. 75 degrees!
For anybody who reads this and might be interested, I'm going to be in Tucson in about two weeks auditioning for the Tucson Symphony. Mostly all I've been doing lately is practicing for that, since I'm doing my best to take it seriously :) That, and playing weird contemporary opera, of course. Good times. Anything where I get to play a slide whistle to represent the main (only?) character's death has got to be interesting on a number of levels. There's also an accordian involved. But anyway... April 8-12, with the audition being on the 10th. Wish me luck in advance!

drugs

This is one of those days where I feel like I should be doing about ten things, but I'm stalled out on the chair in my living room instead. All afternoon I've been having what feels like the Allergy Attack from Hell (what could I be allergic to? It's only been warmish for about 4 days, I can't imagine what could have started giving off pollen already), so I took some medicine and now all I can do is sit here and feel it work its way into my system. Generally, that will lead to lassitude and partial lack of rational thought. Sigh.
I saw "Shortbus" again last night, and it was still great. Other good new movies seen lately: "Stranger than Fiction", "Babel", and "The Prestige". I particularly liked "Stranger than Fiction." I don't usually finish a movie and think "Wow, that was awesome!" but I definitely did with that one.
Sorry for this mildly random medication-induced post.
My favorite line this week from Murakami: "High above us the wind rustles symbolically." I read it, read it again, and then laughed.

support your local period

My do-gooder moment for the day... I've seen this a few times already, but I think it's worth re-posting.

Women's shelters in the U.S. go through thousands of tampons and pads monthly. Assistance agencies generally help with expenses of "everyday" necessities such as toiletpaper, diapers, and clothing, but one of the most BASIC needs is overlooked - feminine hygiene products. (Who is at the helm of thefunding assistance agencies anyway!? Answer: probably old men.) Seventh Generation, a green paper products and cleaning products company, has a do-good attitude and will donate a box of sanitary products to a women's shelter in your chosen state - just for clicking the link. Talk about easy (literally takes less than 5 seconds and they ask nothing of you).

oh my god, a post!

Don't know why I'm so unable to come up with anything to say lately...
Quotes from books I've been reading lately:

"Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart."
-Haruki Murakami, "Kafka on the Shore"

"From time to time I can see their faces, against the dark, flickering like the images of saints, in old foreign cathedrals, in the light of the drafty candles; candles you would light to pray by, kneeling, your forehead against the wooden railing, hoping for an answer. I can conjure them but they are mirages only, they don't last. Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings, I can stroke myself, under the dry white sheets, in the dark, but I too am dry and white, hard, granular; it's like running my hand over a plateful of dried rice; it's like snow. There's something dead about it, something deserted. I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor."
-Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale"

Re-reading "The Handmaid's Tale" was interesting. I first read it in the 10th grade, and the story--The US government is overthrown and replaced by a quasi-religious one where women with invalid relationships (i.e., women who have been married more than once or are in non-married relationships) and viable ovaries are forced to try and bear children for the wives of rich powerful men--kind of freaked me out and sucked me in. Now, years later, the story seems relatively implausible (there's so much change in so little time, for one thing) but the sadness within the story is so eloquently stated that I can't help but appreciate it still. The narrator alternates between tales of her present-day life and memories of her previous life with her husband and child, many centering around the change in government. Her view of reality was what struck me most this time; because she lives in such an uncertain space and because she has no information or way of getting information, the past and the present are both pretty much hers to invent. Immediately after the passage I quoted, she tells in great detail about what she believes happened to her husband after they were caught trying to escape. She gives three different possibilities, and then says this:
"The things I believe can't all be true,though one of them must be. But I believe in all of them, all three versions of Luke, at one and the same time. This contradictory way of believing seems to me, right now, the only way I can believe in anything. Whatever the truth is, I will be ready for it."

visitors

Erica was here, and we ate veggie food, went to used clothing and book stores, and saw Emma Goldman's grave through a series of fortuitous events. Now my friend Miriam, a medieval musicologist who always has lots of fun facts about monasteries and things for me, is here until tomorrow morning. I'm playing a concert of entirely "patriotic" music (if you can consider a Superman medley patriotic...). The theme song from the Olympics is very hard, incidentally. And that's my week.
I feel like I should have more to say, but lately I haven't. Maybe sometime soon.