25 II 2002 - 22:51 - verba10

Right. I was going to write one of my monthly Alchera assignments, but instead, I'll confine myself to the Weekly Challenge No. 4, because I've had a terrible day. More about that later, when I have both the time and opportunity to sort it all out.

For now:

"Weekly Challenge No. 04

Project Begins: Wednesday, February 20, 2002

Project Ends: Wednesday, February 27, 2002

PROJECT DETAILS

'What time of year seems most like your soul? Explore this idea in a journal entry.'"

The summer in San Francisco is notorious for its deception, the word "summer" bearing with it a promise of sun and warmth and light, all swept away by the fog that hangs over the ocean. This is no tule fog, this ocean fog that forms in the summer from the cold current down our coast. Thick, rushing through the gaps between hills and filling the city:

Summer is the season of fog. Tourists have learned this to their sorrow. That fog obscures details, thickening through the block until, early mornings and late nights, there's nothing beyond mid-block. Things appear suddenly as you travel; everything is uncertain until you're on top of it.

Certainly, this is the way of it for me on a clear day, dusk, without my glasses: fancifully, it's probably all of us, not sure of what we're going to do until we're on top of it. I feel a great affinity with this model, paralyzed by uncertainty and second-guessing, being asked to plan my future and my courses and where I would like to go to college in this my second year of high school. I am almost halfway done.

And this fog: surely it's a nuisance at times, but it softens lights, makes the world a little bit easier. People are madmen, they still try to drive as fast, but it's generally more pleasant out. It reminds me of the shoji-lined corridors of my mind, and I don't mind the damp.

And through the confusion, the obscurity: it doesn't blanket everything, the fog. It rolls in, rolls out, leaving gentle sun behind in patches and where the hills act the part of shields, the fog never comes, and mild temperatures are the rule.

With this is the threat of high temperatures, the curse of the lands just to the east of the city, the curse of my unexpected and raging temper: beneath the surface it sits, waiting to shatter the cool of the fog, equanimity, boiling under a surface:

But for now, all is calm, all is fog and gentle, and the city is able to breathe, and I rest, uneasy, in myself.

So there it is. To perhaps awaken interest: the subject of my monthly entry, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases, is "telamon." Telamones are the male equivalents of caryatids, which are the female supporters of buildings immortalized especially in Rodin's The Caryatid Fallen Under Her Stone. I may be making that title up.

Today. Incredibly stressful day. The one good thing?

I got tickets to the concert Mstislav Rostropovich is playing on 15 April!

And that just a couple of months before the event. I'm so happy. And incredibly lucky that there are still seats. He's playing Shostakovich. *swoons*

So there were other bad things. Like, trying to restring the school cello. Borogoves, possibly only you will understand this, but after I tried the first time, I noticed that the bridge was out of alignment. Damn. So I loosened the strings and shifted it back into alignment.

Pop.

Over the next forty-five minutes, I would restring the cello three times, replace the bridge seven times correctly and one time backwards, watch the bridge fall over eight times, have to stuff more dampening material under the tailpiece six times in case it fell.

Aargh.

Then I tried to tell a teacher I don't take any classes from that, no, I didn't want to play in the pit orchestra for Oklahoma!, and that I'd been trying to be polite and get out gracefully, but in the end, I had neither the inclination nor the time to make such a committment work. In addition, I am already being lectured for my lack of time management skills, both by sisters and by parents, and I really don't need to deal with this on top of it.

His reaction?

"You should give it more thought. And rethink it, Jeremy. It's really about giving some of your gifts back to the community."

What would I have liked to do? Throw a tantrum and scream, PISS OFF! STOP PUSHING MY GUILT BUTTONS!

Did I? No. Although I may want to rethink this "suppressed rage" I've claimed to have up above.

So I have that to take care of. Then there was the Latin Test from Hell. Which nobody was prepared for and had a question on material that the bulk of the class wasn't responsible for. (I was. So I blame only myself. But it wasn't fair to ask the rest of the class the same question, I don't think.)

All right. Deep breaths... I've got Rostropovich tickets, and that's all that matters.

Homework now.

(And since Dizboy isn't around to say it for now... "Be well.")