20 X 2001 - 17:50 - vita4

This is going to be another one of those let's-go-everywhere entries. Hang on tightly, because here we go...

A recording of my youth orchestra is going to be on the air tonight at 10 PM; for those of you who live in the Bay Area, it's on 102.1 FM and we're playing Mahler 2. I'm not too hopeful about this, but it might be carried online at http://www.kdfc.com at the same time (which is to say 10 PM, GMT -8), although right now when you go to the website it says that web broadcast has been suspended because of some licensing rights or whatever.

I'm considering maybe switching my background to orange, to a really nice, deep orange, but then it occurs to me that perhaps I might have to change the color of my font or risk blinding whatever audience I still have, and I really don't want to do that, right? So if anyone has suggestions... remember, I'm indecisive, so I can't come up with anything on my own, but I'm also gay, so I'm really good at rejecting things that clash. Forewarned is forearmed; people with bad fashion sense need not apply. (And before you read on, you might note that my idea of fashion sense consists of: "oh good, my socks match and I'm not wearing red and green stripes. I'm set.")

I took the PSAT today. It was less than fun but at least I didn't have to think too hard to do it. I probably got all of the questions wrong, but it doesn't count for anything since I'm only a sophomore, so I'm not too worried about it. Having the hots for the proctor made it sort of hard to focus on the test, though. On the other hand, playing "pick-a-major," "pick-a-career," and "pick-a-religion" was entertaining for only so long, so I had to do something besides stare at the clock. It was nice, because the room was warm, and then it got warmer because our body heat was trapped by the closed door and lousy ventilation, and the reason there's lousy ventilation in the first place is because that half of the school used to be a parking garage. And it's odd, because you'd think that, since it's a new school, heating and cooling systems would work (after all, we have all these fancy locked boxes where the controls are kept...), but of course not! And it's not as if the system doesn't go anywhere, because M. keeps crawling around in there in her spare time and finding the room with all the security cameras and everything... so what is up with our school? (And yes, I know these complaints are minor indeed compared to what a lot of public schools have to deal with, but be patient, there will be a switch of topic about... now.)

Al thinks I would find her oboe coach at the Symphony attractive. Should I be amused or vaguely irritated? (To be remembered: this guy has been around for a while. Can I get an age estimate from you, Al?)

I don't know what to do about B. He's nice, friendly, will actually talk to me... has a big Bush/Cheney sticker on his cello case... allow me to stereotype here for a moment and say that that makes my gaydar go dead. (Yes, I know, I know, we're everywhere, just like Amway. Shush.) G. pushed me out of the sectional room, gesturing madly toward the elevator... which I never take because it's so slow (it has, I've decided, some sort of special talent, because why else would it take so long for an elevator that goes only to three floors to get to the bottom floor? and with my cello, I can climb a set of stairs faster than it can. really). I guess the point was that I should get some alone time with him but that was thwarted when fifty other people got in there with us. Not that I would have said anything if we'd been alone, because, well, you know, I'm a yellow-bellied sap-sucking coward. Not to put too fine a point on it. I realize that it will never happen if I don't do anything, but I don't want to do anything because I don't feel confident enough, and with me, confidence is born from experience, and experience is lacking because nothing ever happens, blah blah blah blah blah...

My cello lesson yesterday went very well; my teacher was very happy and he said that his headache had gone by the end of the lesson, which was nice because he gets terrible headaches. He likes the work I've been doing on the Haydn, which is nice because I don't. (Yeah, yeah, it's never good enough for me, but I can always pretend that it will be at some magical point in the distant future.) Nights like that, where everything falls together, are the ones that make me think that maybe someday I will enter a conservatory and become a musician. Nights like that are joys when they come, but... it's so easy to then turn around and watch a pall come over the joy... there's always that undercurrent of depression, waiting to pull everything with it (remember the words of my teacher: "an artist on his best days is clinically depressed.")

This is day two or day three, depending on how you count it, sans Tiff. Things aren't going well. Depression is up (and with a statement, I feel as if I ought to say something like "and stocks are down," but I won't. Ah! Preterition or paraleipsis!) and so is moodiness and irritability and if I keep this up I will drive myself mad, or someplace similar where I do not want to go. I don't think he's doing much better without her(did he mention something about his hands shaking while he tried to do work? poor guy...) We're lost without her. Can you see it yet? Tiff, come back. We need you badly. [And all for the want of a horseshoe nail...] I hadn't realized how much I depended on her, but of course I should have seen the signs; I could have seen it when I called her from Europe, should have seen it when I started being sullen and withdrawn on the days she missed school, should see it now; what spell has she cast on me? (Or rather, by what means have I affixed myself to her? Because I know that in almost every relationship I have, I am the needier one, that quite likely they could both do without me to complicate things... because I don't have the claim of lust, of romantic love, don't have it either for her or for him, but it's a different [more fragile? who's to say?] bond I hold her to, the one of friendship, of something that is at once less than love and more than friendship [-am I suffering a delusion to become reality? god, i hope it isn't so], and it remains to be seen whether the bond I have with him is secondary, ties that bind because I am bound to his beloved, or whether we have something of our own, a friendship that might survive a split, as did the friendships between Brahms and Joseph Joachim and Joachim's wife - and i want so desperately to believe that the latter is the case because although I do not drink of his heart's blood so often I believe that I rely on it in its own way too- because we are so much alike, all three of us; the complexes he and I share, the currents that run through our veins - yes, we're very different people and would consider very different things but in the end we are made similar by what our minds will do to us, by how much we need her - and then there is the matter of how similar I am to her, what desires, what motives, what complexes I share with her, until it seems clearer that I'm a screwed-up composite of the two-)

Notes from ICQ:

I sort of burned my experience at my old school behind me, kept the depression and changed everything else-
something in me tells me that there's something wrong with building structures on a foundation of depression,

but whatever - full speed ahead.
(uh huh! it's a good idea to build a reservoir right on a fault line! just look along the Peninsula!)

And so it goes on. She gets back tomorrow...

cor, cordis n. heart; mind, judgment

desiderium, desiderii n. desire, wishing, longing for, yearning; regret for what is absent; petition; request; favorite, darling

sanguis, sanguinis m. blood; race, family; life, vigor

A quick note belongs here: these definitions are (usually) the ones that the Oxford Latin mini-dictionary gives, spelling changed for readers who happen to live in the United States (as I do). Thus the question, earlier, of whether "fortasse" or "fortassis" is the correct form for "perhaps"; Oxford gives both, although it prefers the former in its Latin-English section and the latter in its English-Latin section. Your guess is as good as mine.

J (Wow, I did a lot of babbling.)