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!