Si je t'aime, prends garde à toi!
Translation: If I fall in love with you, you best watch your ass.
I used to sing every day. I sang in choir in school at various levels, traveled to China to sing in a vocal jazz combo. Beyond hanging around with one of my friends who sang a bit of opera and trying out a few of her arias, I have never been an opera singer.
These days, I find myself not singing nearly as much as I would like that. I've decided that all that is going to change. I'm going to pick up singing again, and I'm going to do it by poking out into a realm of the voice that I have only ever feared and respected. I'm starting with watching a lot of videos of singers doing what they do best. It began with some Mozart, specifically Die Zauberflöte, as my first excursions into opera as a child under the influence of my mother's taste in music. Therein lay vocal acrobatics that I'm fairly certain I will never be able to perform:
I am not so crazy as to jump right in and tell the world how der hölle rache kocht in meinem herzen, but I do want to set for myself a goal that will push me a bit. I just want it to be, y'know. Doable.
And so, the Habanera! Properly, it is called "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" or "Love is a rebellious bird". So, what makes a good Habanera good versus a bad one? I'm not a trained musician, and I don't have the experience an opera critic does. That being said, here is the one I consider to be the best of the bunch:
This is the yardstick by which I measure the other renditions of this aria. Maria Callas, called La Divina by her admirers, of which I am certainly one. She is so expressive - her breaths seem to be little exclamation points in her singing, she pulls out little nuances in the notes that just tug at your heart.
In my wildest dreams, I am half the singer she was. And so I begin to practice.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Friday, August 22, 2008
Sleepless
This is not my normal insomnia, in which I am tired but something will not allow me to settle, and I spur myself on until I am utterly exhausted and collapse on the bed. No, I am wide awake, and it is now 9AM. My man has woken up and is now in the shower, preparing for the new day. My insomnia normally afflicts me in times of depression, when I lay about all day and do nothing, I find my sloth has lead to a guilt that keeps me awake. Yesterday was a good day, though - I was busy and did quite a bit around the house, took a nice walk to the store in the rain, and didn't spend a lot of time larking about on the computer. When I lay down to go to sleep, I found my eyes open and my body restless. I read for a while, got up and fixed myself a snack, read some more, then gave up at about 7AM or so and got on the computer to check the morning news. It is 9AM as I write this.
There's only two things I can think of that are keeping me so buzzed. The first is that I had some coffee earlier, and though caffeine used to have no effect on me, I have been unintentionally avoiding it for quite a long time. However, this was just a coffee-flavored beverage, really - a frappuccino from Starbucks hardly qualifies as real coffee, and on top of that I finished it off at 4:30PM.
The second and more likely cause is that earlier David Bowie's 'Five Years' came up on my iPod as I was walking home, and I was struck with a memory I never experienced myself. It was a story told to me by my mother and sister after my father died. They visited him in the nursing home he would eventually die in, and brought with them a CD player and a copy of 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust'. My father, mostly incoherent and unable to remember much of anything at the time, bobbed his head along with the rhythm and even tried to sing along, though he garbled the words a bit. I can see it, hear it as if I had been in the room with them, picture the pained look on my father's face as he tried so hard to sing along -
'And all the fat, skinny people
And all the tall, short people
And all the nobody people
And all the somebody people
I never thought I'd need so
many
people'
I see him in a hospital gown, the kind that ties in the back - it is a light blue and patterned in little clusters of four dark-red circles that form the corners of a square turned onto its side. Only one tube coming out of his arm this time. He is whithered and shrunken, as he was the last time I saw him. He is in bed, but the bed is tilted to an angle closer to sitting than laying down. A thin blanket a dustier shade of blue than the hospital gown covers his legs, along with a white sheet. He is not wearing his glasses, and his hair seems so thin. His hands form loose fists, and he looks on the verge of tears. Though he can't quite make the right words, he sings along with passion. I have been haunted by this image, the sound of my father's voice as he sang for the last time. He sang for the last time, and I wasn't even there to hear him.
I resolved to write about his illness and death, perhaps as a semi-autobiographical work with names and situations changed to protect the innocent participants and bystanders in my life. Besides, it would have to be fictionalized, because even if my mother or sister told me I had gotten the scene I described above wrong, I would have to put it down as I see it. Sometimes here I will fabricate something entirely because it helps.
2/28/2006, 3AM: I wake up sick. I stumble, still half-asleep to the bathroom. As I am violently ridding myself of the offending toxin, I hear my phone ring. I only halfway register it. Once it stops ringing I realize that there is only one reason someone would call me so damn late, and I check the message. A voice I do not know says, "This is the nursing home, please call us back right away." I already know what happened, and it is confirmed when I call the unfamiliar voice back. Seven years from now, when he loses his mother, he will think of all the times he told people they had lost their mother, their father, their daughter or son. Maybe he thinks of this call. I call my mother, who has already spoken to them. We sob incoherently together.
My boyfriend at that time holds me and strokes my hair, saying nothing, which is exactly what I need. A few months from tonight I will leave him though he's done me no wrong, but tonight I can't even fathom that possibility. After he goes back to bed, I play Katamari Damacy in the living room and cry. Sometimes I can do nothing but cry. I call in to work, tell them I won't be there. In less than a year, they will fire me for missing so much work, but I don't care right now.
Coming back to the here and now, I am approaching 33 hours awake. I have come back to this story bit by bit throughout my day, adding a little here, changing a bit there. I have yet to have the urge to sleep, yet I know I ought to. I will wait for my man to come home from work. I will have a lovely dinner ready for him, and he will smile. But first I know I have to finish this story. How will I know when it has ended, or what it will be called? When I first started typing, I called it 'Sleepless', just to give the computer something to remember it by, a mnemonic device that is not its true name. I will find it and the end of my story somewhere along the day, which flows past like a swift-moving river, and I hardly noticing. My internet connection has been shoddy all day, and earlier, my keyboard broke. Perhaps my computer is telling me something. But no, no, I am not yet finished and I must not, I cannot stop.
It is evening, it is 7:30PM and the rain has stopped for now. Earlier the sky lamented and tore itself apart, but now it is only gray. Earlier, as I was facing the morning, the bugs buzzed in their trees, dry and active. Buzz buzz bugs, buzz bugs buzz bugs bugs. Now they are too damp to sing their one-note mating song, they've had their desires doused via downpour.
I left this post as it was months ago as a draft, and now I will publish it as 'Sleepless', despite the fact that the title doesn't quite fit.
There's only two things I can think of that are keeping me so buzzed. The first is that I had some coffee earlier, and though caffeine used to have no effect on me, I have been unintentionally avoiding it for quite a long time. However, this was just a coffee-flavored beverage, really - a frappuccino from Starbucks hardly qualifies as real coffee, and on top of that I finished it off at 4:30PM.
The second and more likely cause is that earlier David Bowie's 'Five Years' came up on my iPod as I was walking home, and I was struck with a memory I never experienced myself. It was a story told to me by my mother and sister after my father died. They visited him in the nursing home he would eventually die in, and brought with them a CD player and a copy of 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust'. My father, mostly incoherent and unable to remember much of anything at the time, bobbed his head along with the rhythm and even tried to sing along, though he garbled the words a bit. I can see it, hear it as if I had been in the room with them, picture the pained look on my father's face as he tried so hard to sing along -
'And all the fat, skinny people
And all the tall, short people
And all the nobody people
And all the somebody people
I never thought I'd need so
many
people'
I see him in a hospital gown, the kind that ties in the back - it is a light blue and patterned in little clusters of four dark-red circles that form the corners of a square turned onto its side. Only one tube coming out of his arm this time. He is whithered and shrunken, as he was the last time I saw him. He is in bed, but the bed is tilted to an angle closer to sitting than laying down. A thin blanket a dustier shade of blue than the hospital gown covers his legs, along with a white sheet. He is not wearing his glasses, and his hair seems so thin. His hands form loose fists, and he looks on the verge of tears. Though he can't quite make the right words, he sings along with passion. I have been haunted by this image, the sound of my father's voice as he sang for the last time. He sang for the last time, and I wasn't even there to hear him.
I resolved to write about his illness and death, perhaps as a semi-autobiographical work with names and situations changed to protect the innocent participants and bystanders in my life. Besides, it would have to be fictionalized, because even if my mother or sister told me I had gotten the scene I described above wrong, I would have to put it down as I see it. Sometimes here I will fabricate something entirely because it helps.
2/28/2006, 3AM: I wake up sick. I stumble, still half-asleep to the bathroom. As I am violently ridding myself of the offending toxin, I hear my phone ring. I only halfway register it. Once it stops ringing I realize that there is only one reason someone would call me so damn late, and I check the message. A voice I do not know says, "This is the nursing home, please call us back right away." I already know what happened, and it is confirmed when I call the unfamiliar voice back. Seven years from now, when he loses his mother, he will think of all the times he told people they had lost their mother, their father, their daughter or son. Maybe he thinks of this call. I call my mother, who has already spoken to them. We sob incoherently together.
My boyfriend at that time holds me and strokes my hair, saying nothing, which is exactly what I need. A few months from tonight I will leave him though he's done me no wrong, but tonight I can't even fathom that possibility. After he goes back to bed, I play Katamari Damacy in the living room and cry. Sometimes I can do nothing but cry. I call in to work, tell them I won't be there. In less than a year, they will fire me for missing so much work, but I don't care right now.
Coming back to the here and now, I am approaching 33 hours awake. I have come back to this story bit by bit throughout my day, adding a little here, changing a bit there. I have yet to have the urge to sleep, yet I know I ought to. I will wait for my man to come home from work. I will have a lovely dinner ready for him, and he will smile. But first I know I have to finish this story. How will I know when it has ended, or what it will be called? When I first started typing, I called it 'Sleepless', just to give the computer something to remember it by, a mnemonic device that is not its true name. I will find it and the end of my story somewhere along the day, which flows past like a swift-moving river, and I hardly noticing. My internet connection has been shoddy all day, and earlier, my keyboard broke. Perhaps my computer is telling me something. But no, no, I am not yet finished and I must not, I cannot stop.
It is evening, it is 7:30PM and the rain has stopped for now. Earlier the sky lamented and tore itself apart, but now it is only gray. Earlier, as I was facing the morning, the bugs buzzed in their trees, dry and active. Buzz buzz bugs, buzz bugs buzz bugs bugs. Now they are too damp to sing their one-note mating song, they've had their desires doused via downpour.
I left this post as it was months ago as a draft, and now I will publish it as 'Sleepless', despite the fact that the title doesn't quite fit.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Rain
Garbage in hand, I stepped outside and immediately my ears picked up on something odd. It sounded like heavy rain on a tin roof, and it was coming from somewhere nearby. I felt no rain against my skin, and so I assumed it couldn't be raining, though the air hung heavy with humidity as if it could rain at any moment. Looking up, I saw that just across the parking lot, it was pouring rain. Yet here I stood, dry as bone with garbage in hand. I watched, amazed, seeing very clearly where the rain stopped along the asphalt. I came to my senses and dashed to the dumpster, throwing my garbage away. Just as I came back under the awning of my apartment, the rain had moved to my half of the parking lot, and the crack of thunder rolled in from an unseen spike of lightning somewhere far off.
Friday, March 7, 2008
I woke up feeling like I missed something
Last night I had a dream, where we ran into each other after a long time. We talked as if no time at all had passed, as if we were still friends. I told you how worried I was about you, and you nodded sadly, already knowing what I was going to say. We held each other as we once did, as friends, as siblings. Heat of the summer sun, laying back on your bed in your parent's house with the air conditioner on us. We were once so close, I called you my twin. I know that our separation is my own fault, that I am the one who left. I can't help but think how right you were when you finally told me you loved me - how you said you were afraid to take it there, because it might end our friendship. You were right, of course, but what I think we both didn't understand at the time was that our love for each other, though unsaid at the time, would have affected our friendship anyways. It already had. If we never moved in together, if we'd not gone up to work at the Company - things would be different than they are now, to be sure, but our friendship would still have changed. Whether for better or for worse, we'll never know.
I want you to be happy, and I fear for the misery yet to come. I only hope when you hold her, that she makes you smile. I hope that the coming change, though unexpected and even unwanted, will end in happiness for both of you.
In my dream, your hair was still longer than mine, and I brushed it as we talked. I brushed your hair, and we were twins again. I miss you so very much, and I'll probably never get the nerve to tell you directly. I cry as I write this, because I know you'll probably never read it. I'm not unhappy with my man, and I love him as much as I say I do and more. But I miss my friend, and though I know I couldn't have had both, I wish somehow I could.
Does it hurt too much to talk to me? Or do you just not want to associate with me? You probably hate me now, and are too nice to say so. I wish you would call me, though I know if my phone rings, it won't be you on the other end.
I want you to be happy, and I fear for the misery yet to come. I only hope when you hold her, that she makes you smile. I hope that the coming change, though unexpected and even unwanted, will end in happiness for both of you.
In my dream, your hair was still longer than mine, and I brushed it as we talked. I brushed your hair, and we were twins again. I miss you so very much, and I'll probably never get the nerve to tell you directly. I cry as I write this, because I know you'll probably never read it. I'm not unhappy with my man, and I love him as much as I say I do and more. But I miss my friend, and though I know I couldn't have had both, I wish somehow I could.
Does it hurt too much to talk to me? Or do you just not want to associate with me? You probably hate me now, and are too nice to say so. I wish you would call me, though I know if my phone rings, it won't be you on the other end.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
A Message to You, Rudy's
My man came home the other day, gushing. He had finally found the Barbecue he'd been looking for, he told me. You see, we moved to Austin, TX last week and had visited a few months before, and we'd been told we'd feast on nothing but mind-blowingly awesome barbecue that entire time. Alas, such awesome barbecue was not had until he was taken by his co-workers to a little place called Rudy's "Country Store" & Bar-B-Q. He was skeptical at first - how awesome is the barbecue going to be at a place that looks more like a gas station with a Kwik-E-Mart than a restaurant?
So awesome, apparently.
He took me out the next night to our local Rudy's, on Research Blvd. just off the 183. My first impressions from the outside were the same as his - the hell kind of barbecue am I going to get at a gas station? Road kill? I did find the sign out front claiming to be "the Worst Barbecue in Texas" absolutely hilarious. I stepped inside and it reminded me of home - well, at least a very specific aspect of it. There's a counter where you order your food, and a line leading up to it, with coolers along the way to grab your cold sides and drinks. The rest of the building is lined with picnic tables. It reminded me of this little pie place out in the middle of nowhere, Northern California. Or maybe the pie place is supposed to be reminiscent of this. Whatever, I'm from Northern California, so I'm reminded of the pie place.
When we got up to the counter, my man told our server that it was my first time here - he asked me where I was from, and wished me a hearty welcome that the rest of the staff up front joined in on. Then, I was served a sampler of some of the different meats they serve there. I had a nibble of their dry brisket, extra-moist brisket, smoked turkey and creamed corn. The turkey had a very rich flavor, but I was in the mood for cow. I actually am considering ordering one of their whole smoked turkeys for Thanksgiving, to save me the trouble of cooking one myself, if that gives you an idea of how much I liked it.
Now, the dry brisket was very tasty, and packed a stronger punch than the moist brisket, but I found out the intended eating format is a sandwich, and I thought the dry might make things too dry for that application. However, for those of you who are on a low-carb diet, I'd go with the dry and skip the bread. The meat here is priced by the half-pound (and that's weighed as it's served to you, so after cooking), but you can get any amount you want, so long as it measures on their scales.
All in all, I ended up with the extra-moist brisket and a side of creamed corn, while my man got more of the brisket and a side of coleslaw. Your meat is wrapped in butcher's paper and placed in a soda flat along with your sides and drinks, with more pieces of butcher paper and a healthy helping of white bread. Your paper serves as a plate to make your sandwiches on, and it's got a very picnic-y feel to it. At your table is Rudy's "Sause", a barbecue sauce that's a bit sweet with just enough kick to tingle. You can grab onions and pickles from a condiment stand off to the side to augment your sandwich with, and while I used onions in my sandwiches, they weren't needed in the slightest.
The extra-moist brisket is, of course, wet and flavorful, and works well with a small amount of "Sause" and onions in the sandwich, though all of the meats I tried were strong enough that no such augmentation would be required to make them enjoyable. The creamed corn is very sweet and the corn still has a bite to it - unlike most creamed corn, which has the homogeneous texture of snot. I'm not normally a fan of creamed corn, you see. It needed with a few dashes of pepper to give some kick to counter-balance the sweetness, but I can see why it doesn't come with that pepper already in. Some people don't like everything they're eating to bite back. The coleslaw was pretty standard - tasty but not incredible, but definitely a nice cooling side dish along all the heat being tossed around.
All in all, Rudy's real is the Barbecue we've been waiting for - sure it's not a gourmet format, but it was most definitely good eats. Rudy's has locations across Texas and New Mexico, with one in Oklahoma.
So awesome, apparently.
He took me out the next night to our local Rudy's, on Research Blvd. just off the 183. My first impressions from the outside were the same as his - the hell kind of barbecue am I going to get at a gas station? Road kill? I did find the sign out front claiming to be "the Worst Barbecue in Texas" absolutely hilarious. I stepped inside and it reminded me of home - well, at least a very specific aspect of it. There's a counter where you order your food, and a line leading up to it, with coolers along the way to grab your cold sides and drinks. The rest of the building is lined with picnic tables. It reminded me of this little pie place out in the middle of nowhere, Northern California. Or maybe the pie place is supposed to be reminiscent of this. Whatever, I'm from Northern California, so I'm reminded of the pie place.
When we got up to the counter, my man told our server that it was my first time here - he asked me where I was from, and wished me a hearty welcome that the rest of the staff up front joined in on. Then, I was served a sampler of some of the different meats they serve there. I had a nibble of their dry brisket, extra-moist brisket, smoked turkey and creamed corn. The turkey had a very rich flavor, but I was in the mood for cow. I actually am considering ordering one of their whole smoked turkeys for Thanksgiving, to save me the trouble of cooking one myself, if that gives you an idea of how much I liked it.
Now, the dry brisket was very tasty, and packed a stronger punch than the moist brisket, but I found out the intended eating format is a sandwich, and I thought the dry might make things too dry for that application. However, for those of you who are on a low-carb diet, I'd go with the dry and skip the bread. The meat here is priced by the half-pound (and that's weighed as it's served to you, so after cooking), but you can get any amount you want, so long as it measures on their scales.
All in all, I ended up with the extra-moist brisket and a side of creamed corn, while my man got more of the brisket and a side of coleslaw. Your meat is wrapped in butcher's paper and placed in a soda flat along with your sides and drinks, with more pieces of butcher paper and a healthy helping of white bread. Your paper serves as a plate to make your sandwiches on, and it's got a very picnic-y feel to it. At your table is Rudy's "Sause", a barbecue sauce that's a bit sweet with just enough kick to tingle. You can grab onions and pickles from a condiment stand off to the side to augment your sandwich with, and while I used onions in my sandwiches, they weren't needed in the slightest.
The extra-moist brisket is, of course, wet and flavorful, and works well with a small amount of "Sause" and onions in the sandwich, though all of the meats I tried were strong enough that no such augmentation would be required to make them enjoyable. The creamed corn is very sweet and the corn still has a bite to it - unlike most creamed corn, which has the homogeneous texture of snot. I'm not normally a fan of creamed corn, you see. It needed with a few dashes of pepper to give some kick to counter-balance the sweetness, but I can see why it doesn't come with that pepper already in. Some people don't like everything they're eating to bite back. The coleslaw was pretty standard - tasty but not incredible, but definitely a nice cooling side dish along all the heat being tossed around.
All in all, Rudy's real is the Barbecue we've been waiting for - sure it's not a gourmet format, but it was most definitely good eats. Rudy's has locations across Texas and New Mexico, with one in Oklahoma.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Where's Pac-Man when you need him?
As I walked home from work yesterday, I looked down at my feet and saw a tiny, round candy.
A few feet away was another candy, identical to the first. And then another not much farther down.
I wondered where the trail would lead, and if I was going towards its objective or away from it.
I continued walking home.
A few feet away was another candy, identical to the first. And then another not much farther down.
I wondered where the trail would lead, and if I was going towards its objective or away from it.
I continued walking home.
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