1998: Billy Budd rehearsals going well. I'm having more fun on this show that I thought I would. Being one of only three females on a production is rather a good thing!
Literally every day someone tells me I look good and comments on how thin I've gotten. I am now as small, if not smaller, than I was in college. But -- as I sit here eating my chocolate chip cookies -- it's a light dinner for me tonight!
I love to come here (Panini) when both Vittorio and Ellie are in a good mood. Their banter is very entertaining. Just now, Ellie was trying to tell Vitto, "These are cookies; those are biscotti." And he informed her, "In Italy, they are the same -- biscotti and biscotti" (pronouncing it alla Neopolitana: bish-cotti). I find his accent sort of charming.
2001: Well, one positive thing about all this -- I'm playing really well. Curious, how that works. I don't know if I'll see him today; our schedules don't jive. But maybe he'll come in to the sitz for a while.
Couldn't sleep very well last night -- Così was running through my head and wouldn't stop.
I'm sitting at the bar at the Angelika, which has become almost like a second home to me.
I really should try to get more sleep -- I'm really stanca morta. But the Così rehearsals are always lively, and I do love to play. Especially Mozart. Patrick is a joy to play for, a real master with this rep, except I think some of his faster tempi aren't quite fast enough. But he's so damn musical and sensitive.
My appetite has lessened, and that's always a bad sign -- a sign that I'm on an emotional rollercoaster again. When I fell in love with A_, I couldn't eat a damn thing and went from a size 12 to a 6 in record time.
If anything ever developed between me and X, I wonder how the boss would take it? Not well, I bet. He'd see it as a potential distraction, a negative influence on our work. But you know, as long as I'm happy, I work better and play like a goddess. He remembers, though, all the sturm und drang I went through after A_ left the first time, and it did affect my work in a bad way for a while. Why am I so intense? Why does everything have to be life or death with me?
2002: Another Sunday morning spent in bed, reading the paper (or rather, perusing the advertisements and the TV program), and a bit of Thoreau and Emerson. From Circuit City ads to Walden. Hmm. I'm not sure Henry David would approve!
I'm much too harsh with myself sometimes. About the music thing. My capacity is still there. Maybe I just had an "off" day yesterday. And now I have Corelli playing on the stereo. What is it about Corelli I love so much? His music is, in a sense, undemanding; it reqires only your most basic and simple intellect -- the best and most reliable kind. Maybe that's why much of 20th century music doesn't appeal to me: it takes too much work; and art -- the sheer experience of it -- shouldn't, I think, be so complicated. It should rather bring forth the child in us -- unquestioning, accepting. Call me a simpleton if you will. But immediacy is valuable in such matters. It eliminates that "elitist" idea which alienates so many people from even bothering to try and experience art. Simplify, simplify, simplify! In art and in life. For the two are, or should be, interchangeable.
My reading is going through one of those phases where I leisurely read bits and pieces from this and that: Thoreau and Emerson, Vera Brittain's diary, C. S. Lewis. Non-fiction is easy that way. Novels require an extended, uninterrupted concentration which I simply can't give right now. Summer is the best time for novels.
Oh, how I love Vera Brittain! She and I and Emily Shore might have been great friends. Vera has convinced me that I must read The Story of an African Farm and Plato. So much of philosophic writing has thus far flown over my head, but I think I can comprehend it now. Of course, in the case of Plato, etc., much depends on the translation. A_ likes Plato. "Likes"? Well -- for want of a better word. "Ascribes to"?
Will go and shower now, and try not to waste the rest of this day. Life is all too short.
Think of me, my dearest A_. My letter should reach you soon.
2003: I don't know if I told you that I had applied, through Vocations Placement, for a vocations test. Natalie called and told me of two Benedictine monasteries: St. Scholastica in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and St. Benedict in Canyon, Texas. The latter is a small, conteplative order (St. Scholastica is an active branch and very large) that takes candidates up to age 60!
If all goes well and according to God's plan, I will be going on a retreat in July to St. Benedict. But I also want to plan retreats to the Priory in Lacey, WA, and most especially to the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut, to which I feel very much drawn because they have retained all the old traditions, including the chant in Latin and the full habit. Now that I know the true meaning of the habit, I can't imagine wearing anything else! Why would any contemplative wan to wear ordinary clothes?
If it is not God's will that I enter the cloister, then I hope to be an oblate.
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