Things I Haven't Written

A while ago, I guess at the end of spring break, Ilana and I went to a concert in the Organ Hall, despite the fact that I had vowed never to do such a thing again. But this time there were vocalist and violists in addition to organ music, and the aires of vocalists are always entertaining. They find more variations on the bow than one would think possible. And then, the second half of the concert consisted of Bach’s Coffee Cantata, which is not only very entertaining in itself, but was performed by the same singers who had spent the first half of the concert establishing their ridiculousness, plus it was translated into Russian which made it even funnier, PLUS during intermission they gave out free plastic cups of coffee, and it was fun watching all the serious concert-going babushkas standing in a pack and sipping from identical brown cups with pointless little handles. The concert organizers seemed a little nervous about introducing this element of playfulness to the serious realm of classical music, and actually, all irony aside, I rather like the earnestness of the Russian relationship to the arts, free of some level of self-consciousness that that relationship has picked up in America. Ignore the last two sentences: I completely failed to explain what I mean.

Donkey Xote doesn’t make any sense in the Russian translation, or perhaps it was just all lost on me, or perhaps it didn’t make any sense in English either. I don’t know which.

The two days of spring were nice, but there was a snowstorm last evening and we’ve skipped over summer and fall, I think, and are back to winter.

I’m flying home 8 weeks from yesterday.

I bought some amazingly awesome red high-heeled cowboy-ish boots, and also a red leather belt with various rhinestones all over it. I am going to be so Russian by the time I get home, you are not even going to know what to do with me.

There were a bunch of butterflies around Baikal yesterday.

The rest is still unwritten.