moderato (poco allegretto)

Today instead of going in to the office, I went to the dentist's and walked back home through the city this afternoon! I haven't seen that route in a while, or really gotten to be active much at all lately, and this was my first really quiet time all week, so the stroll really felt so good :)

• got a bite for brunch at the coop bakery - that street is changing hands so fast these days, I'm glad to know that they're still busy
• picked up some pens at daiso and also those mango marshmallows for the heck of it; the second I opened the bag I was transported back to the camp I went to over my high school summers, when they were my favorite snack
• realised I'd spent 45 minutes standing around reading in the used bookstore, so I took that as a sign and got Symphony for the City of the Dead, Anderson's biography on Shostakovitch and the Leningrad Symphony
  • yesterday at another used bookstore I got the Book of Luminous Things, too. Milosz curated this, so of course it's well-organized and each piece is great, but I'm also touched by the fondness, I think, pervading the project. Lives up to the title! 
  • Hardcopies are my vice, I can live with that :)

other good things from this past week: 

• the talk on sanctuary cities, natch
  • been having an inchohate but real Emotion about Langston Hughes' Let America Be America Again, since then
• went to the hip noodle place with a really good friend
  • yall know how great it is to just get to hear someone you care about talk about something they're passionate about
• talked about lawrence of arabia with a new friend
  • did you know that only queer people can properly appreciate that movie
  • jkjk
  • but really, he's a cis guy who doesn't speak mlm, and so we actually got very different stories out of the same film, which is weird/interesting. We both agreed Omar Sharif was the best thing on screen since sliced bread, but he didn't see any of the romance until I told him David Lean really had meant them to be in love. And then he had a 'huh, that's right' moment, but I just wouldn't know how to watch that movie and not see a romantic arc and tragedy. 
    • (similarly, for example: as a cis guy, he didn't get how Lawrence could've gone so far around the bend in act 2 because he didn't realise what Lawrence's capture at the end of act 1 was signifying, wheras I, being dfab, have to put two and two together. it's always interesting to see how interpretations vary!) 
  • I guess that's how it got past the code, of course. I've got a book somewhere on the epistemology of the closet; it would be really interesting to apply flagging and subtext to a queer language game
  • intricate rituals, intricate rituals!
• mass with the newman club!
  • and Sister Administrator invited me to sing again! Aaah it's such an honor and delight! 
  • there's something a little funny about holding mass in a conference room - it was the only room open to be reserved, so we circled around the installed long table for communion, and they put up a picture of stained glass on the wall screen. But the point is, it was still mass, and something about that makes me smile. A church is best, of course, but something can be sacred wherever it needs to be :)
  • also, I know it's been ages now, but my reflex is still for the old translations and melodies. Ah well, it's probably good to concentrate a bit harder on reciting, lol. and by having my ears primed for the old harmonies, I can ad-lib pretty well for a simple responsorial! 
  • I also stayed back a bit to run my sanctuary cities + the confiteor idea past Sister and the priest and got a green light on that, so I'm adding it to the mental bucket of Tentative Thesis Thoughts
    • monday's post, or tl;dr: 'what we do and what we fail to do' wrt not turning a blind eye to our communities -> an imperative for social action

It's been a very busy week, and I've got more work up to my eyeballs, but on review, I think my personal side of things is coming out alright :) I hope everyone's doing well too!