31 V 2002 - 00:17 - verba16

the traffic and the lack of parking are, without a doubt, favorite subjects of complaints for those who live here. roads are clogged, rush hour lasts for three hours or more, and certainly it doesn't help that much intercity traffic is forced to squeeze across only a few sets of bridges. finding street parking is a matter of invoking a long line of deities and wondering just why there isn't a patron saint for parking spaces yet if there are so many saints. with such a demand for parking, it is amusing that every proposed public garage is viciously resisted, although the loud debate over numbers of parking permits becomes, suddenly, more intelligible.

school productions always involve a certain amount of pity and sacrifice. at this particular school, the pity is best directed towards the classical music program. the singers and the jazz musicians do reasonably well for themselves, but the scrapings and scratchings the violinists produce when combined with the shrieks and whistles of the woodwinds suggests that perhaps this ten-member, talent-starved ensemble might be better off doing a heavily aleatoric version of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique rather than a pedestrian arrangement of what once was a Bach organ fugue. sacrifice and pity, indeed: is it that the listeners were deaf to the dissonance that was not supposed to be? is that why compliments still come?

it is a frightening prospect to imagine that in a hundred years, the music modern audiences cannot stomach -- Reich, Cage, Riley, Glass -- might be hailed as such a wonder as anything of Beethoven, Mahler, Bach. it is frightening to many listeners indeed, but minimalism and dissonance have their own beauties as well, and perhaps it might be interesting to see what survives and what is cast aside. certainly Salieri and Cui were well-known in their day; the first is remembered because of Shaffer's play, but who can remember all of the Russian Five without referring to a text? time is notoriously fickle; perhaps better wrist-braces will make Einstein on the Beach finally popular...

al writes again that "we should be there, now, running to make it to sectional rehearsal on time." and certainly the absence of this orchestra, the good orchestra, is a sudden hole in at least one hundred people's lives. there are, however, other pursuits: one is playing at the concert sponsored by a lady who does not believe in black and white and mandates that everyone wear some sort of color. through the afternoon, a parade of colors: many shades of blues for the boys, red dresses for the girls, occasionally a flash of green or yellow that must mean she has asked for a particular color. al writes "i should be there..."

the store hasn't seen so many people at once since the week of the food sale, over the Presidents' Day Weekend. this, of course, is a better sale, since it's the Memorial Day weekend, and all sorts of pots, pans, and cookbooks are half-price. e. finds the time to ask all the other volunteers how they're doing, while s. stands in the cashiers' box, quiet. r. comes up to the box while e. is in the bathroom and says, "you're both pretty quiet... we could probably leave you alone in there and you'd never say a word to each other." that gets a grin. it is this easier humor that makes warmth here...

this is memorial day, and the military cemetery of the golden gate is a reproach to the still, calm, weather, so perfect for going out and doing -- something. the rows and rows of gravestones, so neat even among the hills and the grass and the trees, blanket the hills by the freeway; the entrance is crowded with cars. this sight conjures the memory of a less vivid procession; memorial day was once decoration day, the day for decorating the graves of soldiers, and it was this holiday which charles ives chose to fix as Spring in his suite of holidays. it becomes a perfect day to stay at home and wander in dreams...

conceit upon her father was not the whole of it and, as speech proceeds, glasses come off and the world sharply blurs. a series of twenty-seven entries which are more or less coherent must either sooner or later grate on the nerves; is the world not a better place for the disorder which springs up around it? this is not good writing; it has never been so, but with a sharper contrast the rest begins to click, to fall into place, to at least make sense. unlike this, greater life, which gathers itself not neatly and in stacks but rather in messy folds too big to be gathered with the mind at times.

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