Since I have foresworn discussing the subject of cheese, I obviously can't make a single comment about the latest Dr. Who episode. I miss Eccleston, though... he was really able to lift that show out of the rut of its genre and into some other amazing level. Tennant's a fine guy, but he played too much on mannerism and looks (probably Russell T. Davies' fault as well). I don't find his acting nearly as impressive, anyway.

The newest news is that we (that is, the Dresden Cathedral choir) joined the choirboys and orchestra today to sing Missa X (Carl Gottlieb Reissiger) for Christ the King. It was beautiful. It was also on German TV, so there were cameras everywhere, including one on a crane, and considering that we're not allowed to look into them, it was highly unnerving to keep discovering them in new spots right when your eyes happened to stray over there. I was pretty nervous about it, but it came off alright, and I'm glad -- when we got home, Lenard greeted me with, : "Elizabeth, guess who was most often on the screen during Mass?" I thought he was just teasing, but apparently, Janis (the eldest boy) and I were in the camerapeople's favorite spot.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun and I'm glad it's over. Now I just have to work on the Seydelmann Mass, or whatever that fellow's name is, which we are singing for Christmas.

I'm resurrecting this because I need somewhere to post my Krams where I don't have to tag every relevant person (cf. Facebook). Also, where the people who can see it are those who actually do the work of following the odd cybertrail that actually leads here.

Anyway, basic plot points: I'm living on the outskirts of Dresden with family friends. Ostensibly working as au-pair, but having more fun than working. I sing with the Cathedral Choir, which is wonderful, and I visited the Green Vault the other day and saw the "precious objects" that King August the Strong had collected during his reign. They are truly astounding -- such things as the golden kovsh, or drinking ladle, of Ivan the Terrible, and an almost life-size amethyst and gold bust of Venus.

But the thing that reminded me to post here is a poem I found, by C.S. Lewis:

On Being Human

Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn.
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying,
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear,
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal
Huge Principles appear.

The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of
Arboreal life, how from earth's salty lap
The solar beam uplifts it; all the holiness
Enacted by leaves' fall and rising sap;

But never an angel knows the knife-edged severance
Of sun from shadow where the trees begin,
The blessed cool at every pore caressing us
-An angel has no skin.

They see the Form of Air; but mortals breathing it
Drink the whole summer down into the breast.
The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing
Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest.
The tremor on the rippled pool of memory
That from each smell in widening circles goes,
The pleasure and the pang --can angels measure it?
An angel has no nose.

The nourishing of life, and how it flourishes
On death, and why, they utterly know; but not
The hill-born, earthy spring, the dark cold bilberries.
The ripe peach from the southern wall still hot
Full-bellied tankards foamy-topped, the delicate
Half-lyric lamb, a new loaf's billowy curves,
Nor porridge, nor the tingling taste of oranges.
—An angel has no nerves.

Far richer they! I know the senses' witchery
Guards us like air, from heavens too big to see;
Imminent death to man that barb'd sublimity
And dazzling edge of beauty unsheathed would be.
Yet here, within this tiny, charmed interior,
This parlour of the brain, their Maker shares
With living men some secrets in a privacy
Forever ours, not theirs.

And a music recommendation? Hmmm... well, if you don't know the Bills (and if I haven't already mentioned them), they're a great Canadian string band, a little bit all over the place -- some Russian, Czech, bluegrass, schmaltzy mishmash -- but amazing!

This is my favorite song, as heard on a Niamh Parsons CD (I love her voice!). Someday, if I ever do become an artist, my plan is to make it into a picture book.

Tide Full In

It's sad 'round Dooris when the tide is low,
and the green fields buried 'neath the frost and snow,
and the dark night's lonely with the curlew's cry,
and I'm thinking, thinking of the times gone by.

Oh, the happy summers of the olden days,
and the brown boats stealing through the golden haze*
and the cuckoos calling from the woods within,
and my love beside me and the tide full in.

Was I not foolish, when I let him go
to seek his fortune where the West winds blow!
If a fair wind brought him to my aching heart,
with my two arms around him, we would never part.

Oh, the happy summers of the olden days...

Oh, a dear, dear letter on my fond heart lies --
its words of promise more than life I prize!
For it whispers, "Darlin', soon I'll fortune win,
and return to claim you with the tide full in!"

Oh, the happy summers of the olden days...


*this is my favorite line, and one of the reasons I want to make the song into a picture book.

so, yeah. Life continues.

I think it's snowing outside.

Quick review of the last three weeks:

1. I went to Tyrol and stayed in a Benedictine abbey for four days with a bunch of kids and teens to celebrate Silvester (or New Year's). We hiked up a mountain and attended Mass at midnight in the old-old monastery church. The whole experience was wonderful. I went ice-skating at the foot of some very Alp-like mountains (I'm still not sure if they were part of the Alps, but it doesn't really matter -- they were beautiful).
2. I got to spend two weeks working with the previous Au-Pair, a girl from Zimbabwe. That was awesome -- we had some really good times. I miss her!
3. I started Sprachschule in Wels. I took the right train there, found the school, didn't die of fear at having to talk a foreign language, bought myself lunch (even though I still haven't gotten around to actually understanding the Euro yet) and caught the right train back. There were a lot of Turkish people in my class, plus a man from Paraguay, a man from Iraq, and a man from Afghanistan. All very nice people.
4. I took the kids by bus to KISI rehearsal. It was gratifying to make it all the way to Traunkirchen Viechtau without dying, but overall it was a sort of negative adventure. KISI was fun, but the boys were incredibly disobedient when I gave them instructions -- in perfect German, I might add, so there was no way they couldn't understand me. =P (Nicht laufen bei der Strasse! Bleib mit mir, bitte.) They'll have to be sehr, SEHR gute this week if they want to attend KISI next time. Hmph.
5. Went to Germany to see the new house. It's a farmhouse. It has chickens and nice woodwork and a barn full of old farm equipment. Also a boar's head and roughly two hundred other stuffed monstrosities. Fortunately most of them don't come with the house -- besides being somewhat hideous, they seem quite unhygienic to me. I mean, they're the rather furry and hairy skins of dead animals. I can see myself being highly asthmatic in a house full of pelts -- carpet's bad enough.
6. Today we went ice-skating again, and it was great! Unfortunately I still can't feel my left big toe. I have very bad luck with ice skates -- I definitely need to get my own nice pair soon. I love ice-skating -- it feels like flying, practically, but: no asthma!! Finally a sport I can play without suffocating. =P (FYI, thanks to the dumb environmentalists, the effective ingredient in asthma inhalers is now verboten. The alternative doesn't really compare, so... bleh.)

And, as a final treat, I will tell you my dreams from the past few days! *fanfare* They're not as bizarre as usual, unfortunately.

1. I dreamt we were going mini-golfing at a place that looked familiar to the one in Oxnard, but the price was 31 Euros. I gave them 52 Euros (don't ask me why), but this guy we were going with, who was tall and dark haired and wore a long black coat, became really angry (in a pale, tight-lipped kind of way) when he found me trying to pay the old ladies at the desk. He grabbed my upper arm and pretty much lifted me away. That was the most vivid part of the dream -- his hand cutting into my arm and stopping the blood flow to my hand. He wasn't raging mad, but the idea of my paying was so abhorrent to him that he didn't even say anything when he found me, just carted me off. He never even got back my 52 Euros!
2. Then I dreamt about Doctor Who, only he was actually being cool instead of the twit he's being right now. the dream was also about us moving to Pocking, but Mad was there. The only thing I really remember was the best part -- at the end I was an eagle, diving through layers of blue sky toward a little green earth. Wheeeee! Then I woke up. But I felt good all day because it was such a great dream.
3. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand last night I dreamt about a cardboard box full of fuzzy ducks. Only these ducks spit up like babies. They were really cute, and really disgusting. There was a lot more to the dream (the box was on an upper level of a sort of courtyard, and there was an old guy... and Herbert Pocket, I think. From Great Expectations.) But the ducks are what I remember. And maybe a dance? Something about light bulbs...

Hopefully I will now begin to update more regularly. It is snowing outside. Or hailing or sleeting or something, 'cause it's making a lot of noise and it knocked open my balcony window. I should go to sleep.

Merry Christmas!

I hope you all have a good one.

I have been completely and profoundly unable to comprehend that these are my last few days in America. However, Anita called today, and we had a good chat. She also told me that they're moving to Germany in three months, to a "super house" about an hour away from Scharnstein. Wow. That's news.

So... I'm kind of gearing up. :)

I have five more nights at home. I don't care how jealous people are, mostly I'm just scared. I have moments when I catch a breath of that wind of change that tastes so good... oddly enough, those times are most when I feel that my family will continue to do grow even while I'm in Austria. I don't feel bummed that I'll be missing stuff -- just relieved that we're not disbanding or anything. It's going to happen someday; everyone will eventually go their separate ways, and then we'll have family reunions and remember the times when we could all be together at the same time. The other night when I was mourning the fact that the Shakespeare days, the Sunday brunch days, were all drifting astern, Lucy reminded me that that's just what happens when one period of life replaces another. Every time has its own peculiar beauty, and to bemoan the loss of a previous one is to miss the one in front of you.

A lot of the time I just have this cloud of terror hanging over me -- mostly, right now, terror of navigating the Munich/Linz airports, switching planes, and getting through security without losing myself hopelessly. Occasionally I can de-stress enough to feel excited. It's an entirely new stage of my life. Who knows where I'll go from here? And it'll probably be the best thing that's happened to me, ever. I know it will all work out for good. But I also need to take a chill pill.