365 grateful project (count=129)

for once it felt like February. we grabbed starbucks to warm up the walk to the barns. the music was most definitely worth the chill.
• quartet of heart and breath was a bit too abstract but nevertheless very interesting, musicians using stethoscopes to monitor heartbeat/breath and control the tempo
• Rose Bolton’s coming of sobs
• Bruckner’s string quintet in F major

memories of the future

Side trip to Moscow

p68: A city knows nothing of separations–that never dispersing crowd, music without pauses–the people in it are too close together to be close to one another. The narrow streets along which you and I are now wandering, Sonata, are forever knocking into each other for want of space, physical or otherwise // The person who doesn’t want this soup rattles his spoon and pushes the plate away; but people with no appetite for each other tend to rattle on and on, unable to push away what is unnecessary

p67: I recognized the restrained sorrow of the first movement, Les Adieux // but then Stuart Mill was right: to understand is to transgress // unable to take my leave of the sonata of leave-takings // so I invited the sonata, as it alighted from the keys, to walk with me along the muddy cobles in the lanes across the river. In exchange for the emotion the music had given me, I offered to help it finish what it had begun. Happiness, I argued, doesn’t like to oblige people because people don’t give it (happiness) any holidays. If people knew how to live like the sonata, in three movements, interspersing meetings with partings, allowing happiness to go off for short spells, for a few bars at least, they mightn’t be so unhappy

side trip to irreality

p100: Pascal was the first to separate the world of reality from the world of dreams. ‘Reality,’ he asserted, ‘is constant, whereas dreams are flimsy and variable; if a man always dreamed the same dream, and if he woke up every day among new people and new surroundings, then reality would seem to him a dream, while his dream would have all the qualities of reality.’ // reality since Pascal’s time has lost much of its constancy and invariability // nearly every day the morning papers give waking up a new reality, whereas dreams … haven’t we managed to unify dreams?

side trip to resignation

p109: Resignation to one’s fate takes practice. Like any art. Or so citizen Shushashin maintains. He begins every day–after putting on his shoes and washing his face, before throwing on his jacket–with an exercise. Again, the expression is his. This exercise works like this: he walks over to the wall, puts his back up against it and stands there in an attitude of utter resignation. For a minute or two. And that’s all. The exercise is over. He can begin to live.

How to imagine St Petersburg in Toronto

Image from other-st-petersburg.ru

Steven and Haina decided to visit St Petersburg this year.

I decided to find the best guide to St Petersburg.

“Why this site is so disorienting // Most websites and city guides try to make things easy for their users. This one does not. // In fact, it deliberately sets out to lead its visitors astray, to tempt them down unknown paths, to plunge them into the thick of the St Petersburg fog. In short, to get them well and truly lost.”

It is not hard to name a film that leaves too little to the imagination. Can the same be said of traveling? Maybe the only thing better than visiting St Petersburg is not visiting St Petersburg.

How to imagine St Petersburg in Toronto
+The Double (play & film)
+Russian Revolution Reenactment
+25 dollar tickets to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 “The Year 1905“
+Does throwing a shot of vodka into an Americano make it a Russo?

365 grateful project (count=65)

• Love the “Keep Calm & Invest On” campaign.
• We cooked together a few times. (I did the 50/50 speech on the second date.) But this time he cooked for me. Lemon juice from a bottle. Garlic from a press.
• He got tickets to see Blue Dragon, Robert Lepage’s new thing at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. At first, I found the combination of a modern visual and a Chinese opera soundtrack jarring. Towards the middle of the play, I started enjoying the tension. The ending(s) is/are not particularly satisfying and I’m tired of the Angry Asian Girl archetype but there are lots of interesting elements to ponder over. I love the scene where the Angry Asian Girl turns around and takes a picture of her angry face with her cellphone.
• Mum + Dad got me green tea cookies for Chinese New Year.
• Madeleine Peyroux

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• I once saw a girl who looked like Francoise Hardy in Lyon. I have been looking for a striped tee ever since. I never found one that worked for me. I can do contrasting colors but I cannot do contrasting stripes. Finally I found this striped tee at Gap. Lack of contrast means I can wear this with navy trousers, black cigarette pants or ultramarine skirt.
• Shopping at St Lawrence Market with Carl. He bought bread, two kinds of cheese and lamb sausage. I bought lemon, two kinds of mushroom and duck confit. Preceded by coffee at seven grams. He seems much less stressed than other wedding-approaching guys. Me thinks Sharon is taking care of everything!
• loca loca loca

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• Mozart’s Concerto for Three Pianos followed by Jupiter Symphony. The three pianos were interesting although not particularly impressive. Love how they played each voice of the last movement before they played the symphony. You can hear the build forty seconds into this youtube video.
• Really really good food at Tutti Mati (e.g. cold smoked duck carpaccio with salted chestnut praline frisée, radicchio and quince vinaigrette). I love this place. I don’t know why I don’t go there more often. Instead always seeking out new places. The chandelier somehow evokes Fresnel lens used in lighthouses.
• Looking forward to a couple things at the Factory theater: Penny Plain and the Big Smoke. Also looking forward to a couple things at Soul Pepper: High Life and Endgame.
• I’m generally happy with who I am. One person I have been envious of is Stephen. How can he be so smart and so easygoing at the same time!!! Stories I heard at his housewarming made me realize that it’s not so easy being Stephen. For example, when Denise and Stephen visited Japan, they bought two bottles of soft drinks together. Even though Stephen clearly preferred one over the other, Denise drank that one. Denise would never do that to me. Even easygoing people have to draw the line somewhere but they don’t always know how.