04 II 2003 - 23:53 - hora sera est; cunctor.

You know, Ilonina, our march was going to be on that day, too, but for some obscure reason, the Chinese New Year parade is on that day as well. Of course we couldn't have two large rallies at the same time -- it would be a logistical nightmare, not to mention that some people wouldn't know which one to go to -- and so the peace rally is going to be on the 16th here.

The City that Knows How: a day late.

Flood, I wish you'd never mentioned Literati to me -- not that I don't want still to play a game with you, but I've been hooked enough that I've become unproductive after 10 PM. I think my greatest triumph was the playing of 'geminate,' but I could be mistaken.

I'm in a bubbly mood tonight, apparently -- perhaps playing through orchestra excerpts agrees with me. Then again, I think I'm writing here to ignore the fact that I feel oftener these days as if I can't play. My teacher told me today that I may start Britten's First Suite for Solo Cello after my seating audition. There is no cohesion to this paragraph. End.

I wonder if there will ever be any end of my being a schoolchild -- I know there must be, but I can't imagine it. I had two tests this morning, one a physics test and the other in Latin. H. helped me to study for the Latin, and as a result I was (this will come as a surprise to her) in a good place for vocabulary. We'll see if the essays I wrote have any merit -- I feel often as if I'm only a step above staring blankly into space and dribbling spittle on my paper, hoping that by some aleatoric magic a good essay will form. (Hey, maybe I should try that with music -- but it's been done.)

I should be working -- from Literati I have moved to Diaryland in my choosing of ways to put off that essay -- but since when has that ever stopped me? I've taken recently to wearing a little green-jade tiger around my neck, from about the time of the new year. I got it from a family friend about three years ago but never got around to wearing it -- but now the weight has become familiar and I find it doesn't seem as bad as it used to. Having it gives me something to fiddle with (for the times when I am badly still). Perhaps I also feel it connects me a little more firmly to the Chinese traditions I think I'm rejecting. When I daydream, I look at the tiger and see the hands of artisans two thousand years ago who patiently wore it away with jade-encrusted cords into fantastic shapes (jade is about the same hardness than iron and cannot be worked with bronze, the strongest metal available to the ancients. I think -- it's been a while since I saw that display at the National Palace Museum in Taipei). It's a start.

There's a mirror by my bed, and late at night, when I don't have my glasses on, an entirely different creature stares at me from it. Perspective and shadow conspire to hollow out my eyes, to blacken the curve of my collarbone, until it is something not entirely whole that stares back at me. For some reason, this unsettles me, whether it is simply the hour or if it isn't something else, a sense that this version of me lies not too far underneath my own flesh, and that it is ready to spring out at a moment's notice, a fifth column with disease at the gates. (Is it Rilke who writes of the knight who rides with an eager Death in his bag?) By daylight, it is ridiculous to think this way -- I am healthy, I am young -- but in the face of this other, my nerve fails...

It has begun to be light when I wake up, which means that I can no longer rely on a brightening of the room to tell me when I have to get out of the shower. But perhaps it is the time of day that puts strange things in my mind when I catch sight of my reflection --

a month and a half ago, when it was still dark as I went to school, and the rain was coming down, the city was beautiful, lying spread out on its hills as we went down Market Street, near where it ends and becomes Portola. The streetlights were still on, but not much traffic was visible (except for the bridge, on which traffic starts at some crazy hour like 5:30 or something). And all that came to mind was a passage from Catullus 6, 'non tam latera ecfututa pandas' (you would not display such sex-worn sides), and I couldn't figure out just why I'd thought it, just as I couldn't figure out why purple clouds at dawn should inspire such terror in me two weeks ago. I love my city, but it would seem I think she is a tart.