How one book leads to another ...

I admire people who plan their reading, because my own appetite for books so often leads me down random paths.

Last year, for example, I was intrigued by the example of a Unitarian minister who, in an article for the UU World magazine, admitted he handles the proliferation of reading material by saying, "I only read classics." This leaves him out of touch with party conversation, a minor inconvenience.

Concentrating on classics offered some illuminating moments (the astonishing modernity of A Sentimental Education; finding that important scenes in War and Peace happen in places I had recently visited; discovering that Anna Karenina rocks;) and some forgettable ones (I will never make it through Madame Bovary and am not too sure about Moby Dick, either.)

Thank goodness Raymond Chandler counts as a classic, because I love mysteries.

Sometimes this reading plan involves nothing more complicated than finally getting all the way through a book already on hand.

For example, The Tale of Genji, which I bought in a very nice two-volume hardback edition sometime in the 1980s, and read part way (the bookmark is from a small independent bookstore swept away almost 20 years ago.)

A couple of months ago I picked up the first volume and plunged in, finding 11th-century Japan an interesting retreat from the present. Then this article alerted me to a more recent translation, and I abandoned the hardback in favor of a fat, well-annotated paperback. (You must read the footnotes to follow the action.)

Because Heian Japan is so far removed from the modern world (Japanese also read the novel in translation, because their language is about as remote from 11th-century court Japanese as our English is from Beowulf) I departed from the novel for a while in favor of a book about court life in ancient Japan - The World of the Shining Prince, by Ivan Morris. When the library copy turned out to be crumbling, dirty and stained (it was written in 1964) I bought a brand-new paperback edition, with its illuminating introduction by a professor of Japanese literature and culture who was a student of the late Dr. Morris.

So - what IS it about a book that people have been reading for 1,000 years? Morris points out that Genji is about a minute coterie of highly cultured people surrounded by peasants who lived very little better than their animals. Transportation was primitive, and being sent into exile involved going no more than 20 or 30 miles from the seat of government.

The book is often called the first psychological novel, because of its focus on the involved relationships and complicated feelings of a tiny community in which everyone knows everything about everyone else. Murasaki Shikibu, the author, was part of this world, a clever, well-educated observer who wrote about what she knew. And the novel is also about longing, loss, and the impermanence of everything - beauty, love, life itself.

When Arthur Waley's version of the novel appeared in the 1920's, Virginia Woolf was elated to discover a major work by a woman previously unknown in the West. The irony of the novel's long history is that in its own time it was considered an inferior form of literature. Men - emperors and princes - composed imitations of classic Chinese poetry. Women, generally discouraged from studying the dominant Chinese language and culture (although Murasaki, the daughter of a scholar, was allowed to study the language along with her brother) used the developing Japanese script to write "tales" for the amusement of the court.

The poetry faded away. Murasaki's "tale of the shining prince" remains -- along with longing, loss, and the impermanence of everything.

Spring is coming. Really?

Yesterday Cliff Mass said "Snow in the mountains," but this morning I woke to see quarter-size snowflakes plopping on the deck (which is perhaps 100 feet above sea level.)

The snow was soon followed by rain, then sun, then wind, then more clouds and rain - and next Friday is the first day of spring. It could snow then, too.

I would happily desert Seattle for almost anywhere warm in March. My good friend in the building insists February is the month to be away - "It starts to get nice in March, and all the flowers begin to bloom."

Though it can be cold and snowy in February (especially this year) we often get a week or more of mild sunny days that make you think spring is just around the corner. And besides being a short month, February has Valentine's Day, my birthday, and President's Day weekend - all reasons to stay here and enjoy.

March is too long and too gray. Fortunately it offers at least one opportunity to celebrate - Z's birthday. This year she was enmeshed in tech rehearsals the week of her birthday, and I had both a board meeting and an orchestra rehearsal on mine, so we combined celebrations last Friday, the 13th, with dinner for a small friendly group at a nearby restaurant. Along with belated birthday wishes, the dinner was a chance to celebrate the "best overall production" award Z and her actors won last week at Kaleidoscope, a one-act play festival sponsored by the Washington State Community Theater Association. Now they go on to regionals, and everyone thinks good thoughts!

Miscellaneous rumblings

The unit upstairs goes on the market next week.

Tonight the owners are rolling heavy objects from one room to another. Their unit is the penthouse - the entire top floor of this building - so they have plenty of room to rumble, as it were. From time to time Sparky crouches, looks up, then runs to another room.

Outside we have rain, wind and snow in the mountains, after a week or more of cold but clear weather. It was especially annoying to set clocks ahead last Saturday night with snow falling - Daylight Saving time is supposed to have something to do with spring, after all!

Cats have the right idea:



But I'm not a cat, so I bundled up and went out, to see the current exhibition, works from the Munich Secession,here. The Frye has been part of Seattle's art scene for a long time, with a collection best described as "eclectic." Because much of the permanent collection was acquired early in the 20th century with the help of an American artist who had studied and exhibited with the artists of the Secession, everything on the walls converges at this exhibit. Some paintings are beautiful, a few are downright creepy, but the show is well worth a visit. Look for the Childe Hassam painting of woman and child in the Parc Monceau, and the portrait of a woman in a pale pink ensemble that is the essence of fashion circa 1907.

This painting, called "Dead Man on a Beach," looks astonishing like one of the more jarring scenes in Erwartung. If the woman were only wearing a white robe instead of a black shawl...

The economy is everywhere...

One of the side effects of the current economic situation is - old coins.

Not collectible coins, just old coins. Lately when I've examined a miscellaneous handful of change, I've found coins with dates from way back. So far the star of the collection is a 1910 Lincoln penny, in well-circulated condition.

I think these coins are coming from cigar boxes and piggy banks and jars in the back of drawers and all the other places change accumulates. As a bit of a coin hoarder myself, I know what an eye-popping Coinstar total slip looks like.

"Every little bit helps, as the old lady said when..."

Never mind. It was one of my father's quips.

Not again.....!

More snow this morning - two or three inches, depending on where you live. I want these daffodils to open fearlessly, not drowse half-open under melting snow.

We've already had our February week of sunshine and warmth, the reason there are so many white-laden daffodils and crocuses this morning.

Two more orchestra concerts coming up, next Wednesday and the week after. Even our conductor, who is talented, energetic, skilled - and fearless! - admits the current program is the most difficult she has ever chosen for us. Unluckily for all concerned, several strong players are unavailable this quarter, and although we may sound like this, it isn't intended.

Now that Ash Wednesday is past, it must be time for Easter music rehearsals. Tonight we'll find out if it's true that our choir and another may combine for the Brahms "Requiem."

Dr. Freud goes to the opera

Like the novel, opera takes on all subjects. Already this season Seattle Opera has moved from Ancient Greece, to a candy-box idea of Ceylon, and now comes turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna.

The program features two one-act operas: "Bluebeard's Castle," by Bartok, and "Erwartung," by Schoenberg. Practically speaking, the double bill is a great solution for hard times, as one opera ("Bluebeard") has only two main characters, and "Erwartung" has only one.

All the singers are talented and experienced, more than able to keep up to the spiky music. "Erwartung" is a tour-de-force for the soprano, who makes the difficult music swirl and soar.

Both operas grew out of the ferment of all things new in their time, to the point that the libretto for "Erwartung" was written for Schoenberg by a woman who was deeply engaged by Freud's work. Bartok's interpretation of the Bluebeard legend was heavily influenced by Nietzsche.

The wide gold frame surrounding the stage immediately sets the mood - the dark side of one of Klimt's glowing canvases.

All that said, these operas felt like the longest one-act events I've ever sat through. I'm glad to have seen the production, but wish I had ordered a glass of wine during intermission!

President's Day weekend

In spite of missing 99% of its leaves, this amaryllis managed to push out one perfect blossom, just in time for Valentine's Day. (I photographed it in front of a jade plant to have a bit of green in the picture.) Whoever packed the bulb into its shipping box trimmed overenthusiastically, and I expected very little after planting.

It's a sunny morning, and I hope it stays that way. Yesterday began clear and almost warm, then the weather did a 180, and by the time I went out to check on the Sunday market, it was gray, damp and really cold. At the market, vendors huddled under quilts or blankets, hoping the sun would come out in time to attract more shoppers.

Mid-afternoon a friend and I attended the final performance of the Fauré Requiem, featuring the Symphony Chorale. For these performances, the guest conductor worked with a chamber-size instrumental ensemble featuring lower orchestral voices - viola, cello, bass, French horn, harp, plus the organ - and the 80-voice chorale maintained a vibrant, but appropriately pianissimo, tone quality throughout.

"There are only about 25 measures of double forte in this piece," said the Chorale director before the performance. Because the singers did the pianissimo and pianississimo sections so well, the few loud sections stood out as they were supposed to do.

The Fauré is the loveliest requiem I know, and I've had the good luck to sing it several times. Fauré himself called it "Death's lullaby" ("la berceuse de morte") and insisted on leaving out most of the more terrifying sections of the requiem mass. Whether listening or singing, I have never made it through the last section, "In Paradisium," without tearing up.

My friend heard the Requiem in a church in New York City, two weeks after 9/11.

"Not a dry eye in the house," she said. When the collection plate went around (the performance was a benefit for rescue workers) the big bills quickly piled up.