Tomorrow I'll be moving into my final Wellesley dorm room. My first, and only, single room.

From then onward, my senior year will commence and will rapidly flow away.
This time last year I was sitting at the Help Desk wondering what Vienna would be like, who I would meet, what I would do. There were no clear pictures in my head for what the year would hold.
Now, I have before me some very clear pictures. Friends I will breakfast with, have coffee with, and too much wine occasionally. Concerts I will give, with Tupelos, with the Chamber Music Society, and even my own grand senior recital I get to plan for the month of April or May. I will spend hours upon hours going to stores and trying on dresses for this occasion, just because it's an excellent excuse for it. Entire days of my life will be spent in the music building, practicing, rehearsing, arranging, laughing, and probably at some point or another, crying. I expect both success and failure with my grad school applications, and I'm ready to take it on. I'm ready to go anywhere I can, try on some place brand new and see if it fits. I haven't felt this way maybe in my entire life. Texas, New York, Boston, Michigan, the Netherlands, Austria, England---all of these are possibilities, and I could see myself happy at any of them. It's kind of scary to me how calm I feel about that.

It will feel great to get my map back on my bedroom wall, and to say hello to all of the pictures I left behind this year. In my room, I always feel surrounded by good friends. My pictures, my musical instruments, and my books. I have acquired so many more this summer that I'm afraid I'll be lining my window sills with them too...

It hasn't even been two months that I've been home. The summer has been lagging on, and tomorrow couldn't come soon enough.

-luce

Anna, day 12

today at lunch I was going to read Anna and then I feel asleep under a tree, not a bad alternative

favorite quote from when I was reading last night:

"I unhappy?", she said, drawing near to him and gazing at him with a smile of rapturous love. "I am like a hungry man to whom food has been given. He may be cold, his clothes may be ragged, and he may be ashamed, but he is not unhappy. I unhappy? No, this is my happiness..." -Anna, page 190

luce

New Friend

Allow me to introduce you to my new friend and music making partner. She was crafted by Rudolph Tuts in Innsbruck, Austria and was copied after the Denner flute from around the 1750s. This is a Baroque wooden flute with no mechanism, a tapered inside (as opposed to the cylindrical one of modern flutes), and a beautiful sound.

To increase my experience with early music, I'm going to be taking Baroque flute lessons in addition to modern flute with my current teacher, Suzanne Stumpf. This is actually her baby!! She purchased it some odd years ago from Tuts himself in Austria, and is generous to lend it to me. We had our first lesson yesterday, and she instructed me how to take care of the flute. This involves oiling it with almond oil to keep the wood from cracking, and wrapping thread around the joints when the humidity is low and the joints are loose, or taking off thread when the wood is expanding. It's really, really interesting!
Not only are fingerings different, but you have to be so careful approaching each and every note on this kind of flute. The modern flute basically came about in an attempt to "fix" the uneven palette of this kind of flute because it was too quiet for the growing size of orchestras and concert halls. The forte f natural is seriously a whisper! and THAT's it!
I am so happy to be playing this flute for a while, I already have fallen captive to its haunting sound and the mystery of finding the perfect place for each note. It will also nicely stretch my tiny hands, because the fingering holes are v--e---r--y far apart.
-lab

All's Well

I missed this town...

Last night I went to Shakespeare on the Common with my sister and her husband and a bunch of their friends. Some of them were people I met last summer during all of the wedding festivities. I feel so lucky to be able to hang out with them more now that we're all back in Massachusetts! Unfortunately, they were doing probably the most boring Shakespeare "comedy", All's Well that Ends Well. We read the synopsis aloud felt collectively disgruntled. And then our fears were confirmed: it was in fact the first Shakespeare play that I ditched at intermission. But, all is well that ends well, it had been a beautiful night to go into the city, saw a lot of fun people, and had awesome chicken broccoli pizza!!

I also had forgotten how much I love Boston architecture, especially the apartments buildings that look like organ pipes...BU might make my grad school list after all...

-lab

Good Harbor Beach

I took Bess with me to Gloucester last weekend. It was my first dip in the Atlantic since I stuck my toes in on the coast of France in February. This time my whole body was involved, and the waves were great :)

It was sunny and beautiful, and got overcast right as I was getting a bit red, so all in all a perfect day.

a hazy, lazy day

to pass the time

borrowing and listening to the Matthew and John Passions in one sitting
driving around on the countryside roads i like best
doing charcoal sketches
sitting on the living room floor playing my red guitar
conveniently forgetting to work on my applications
riding the purple bike along the bedford trails
picking up stones
not writing because that would mean remembering
not even writing thank-you notes because i can't find my stationary ever since i got home
singing, singing some more, and humming when my voice is tired
rolling portugese words between my incisors and molars
buying the cheapest nail polish in the store
braiding my hair
gluing lace onto my jean shorts
cutting flowers out of egg holders
comparing curtain designs for my dorm room
moving the pile of clothes from my chair to my floor to my bed, and back
trying on all of the pretty dresses in marshall's and tj max
breakfasting with grams then getting to work late
reading russian novels, beginning with anna
breathing
baking blueberry scones and trying new recipes
forgetting about every cup of tea i make and drinking it later, cold
listening to the same cd with my favorite songs on loop in my car
splurging on frozen yogurt when work was busy and my head is full of voices talking at me
finally making my sister's wedding present
falling asleep every night by 10

wondering when this heaviness will go away

-lab

I thought of this scene earlier today---one of my favorites. and, it always works.
The quality here is horrific, but it was the only video clip of the actual scene that I could find....any one who has never seen "White Christmas" should rent it immediately.

sweet dreams---

luce

anna karenina, day 5

I'm just making the acquaintance of the novel's namesake, and I'm quickly falling in love.

"Oh yes, it is good to be your age," Anna continued. "I remember and know that blue mist, like the mist on the Swiss mountains...that mist which envelops everything at that blissful time when childhood is just, just coming to an end, and its immense, blissful circle turns into an ever-narrowing path , and you enter the defile gladly yet with dread, though it seems bright and beautiful ...who has not passed through it?" (page 72)

I will remember summers like these

thick air wanders around the room like the fingers of a
lover lost at sea.

this is not a long-distance plea. this is not my heartbeat
tapped out over telephone wires like primal morse code.
this is not a half-familiar dirge to the half-remembered.
is this the way it ends, i wonder, as the earth fills this
watery grave? polite smiles and the slow rot of my mumbled
oaths like rustily overgrown railroad tracks? we wane like
forgotten flowers, dissolve like oil and water.

i never forgot my dream: i turned to face down the rolling
hill of your street, to wrap our bodies tightly together
in red thread knotted at either end, to press us together
as the earth fell down. i turned to see you there,
and you were gone.

maybe someday you will know. maybe someday i will send you
every pen-scratch, every pressed flower, every song, in
perfumed envelopes incensed with my spirit.
it will not harbor guilt, nor strings, nor the begging voice
of a hungry ghost. simply you will own them to read,
simply to know, simply to have.
i see you: you are married then, content in your little house.
no matter how much i worry about it, your eyes will never change.
they will remain that haunting blue, penetrating and glorious.

and when you finally inherit the presence of mind
to put your head on my shoulder, perhaps then
this separation will sew close effortlessly.

-emma celeste, from lookedlikelaughing

in a manner of speaking

I baked blueberry scones and made lemon curd tonight....and then felt like missing Clara even more, so I finally learned her song. <3

-lab

the lake

Back at work after a week at the cottage in Michigan, I'm missing the sunsets and breezes already.

DUCKS.

Getting to Michigan was essentially like experiencing culture shock all over again. Even with that combined with the entire week being a busier and stressier time there than usual, I still feel the same calm that I always feel after spending time there. There were a couple of gorgeous nights with shooting stars, and some beautiful early mornings spent water-skiing. I had some time to play music, not as much as usual, but at least a bit. Every afternoon was solid awesome volleyball, and this year I really held my own. It felt very "coming of age" to be a solid player and be drinking a beer in between games. I love being 21 in America. 

Michigan also marks the halfway point of my abbreviated summer. Three weeks of work at Wellesley before it, and now only three weeks more until new students arrive on campus and I move in to my dorm early for orientation. And one by one, little by little, my friends will move back on campus.

So, I am enjoying summer, but I am not going to be that sad for it to be over ;)
-lab