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Saturday, August 11th, 2007
Fazıl's conversation with Ka about atheism in chapter 32 is hilarious, with an edge of tragedy running through it. Some choice passages: "...but you've been to Europe; you've met all the intellectuals and all those alcohol and sleeping-pill addicts who live there. So please, tell me again, what does it feel like to be an atheist?""Well, they certainly don't fantasize endlessly about suicide." ... "Just be yourself." "That's not going to be possible as long as I have two souls inside my body," said Fazıl... "It scares me to have nothing but Kadife inside my head. It's not just because I don't know her. It's because this proves I'm a typical atheist. I don't care about anything except love and happiness. ... And when I think that, my feelings for Kadife become all the more unbearable -- it hurts to know that my only consolation would be to spend the rest of my life with my arms around her." "Yes," said Ka ruthlessly. "These are the sorts of thoughts you have when you're an atheist." And much more. I am beginning to think from little lines like "The pity and annoyance he could see on Ka's face made him blush with shame", that one of the central themes of this book is the experience of being socially at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the person you are speaking with, and the feelings of embarrassment and shame that that gives rise to.
posted evening of August 11th, 2007: Respond
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Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
The hacked-together script which powers this blog is approaching the limits of its capacities. All along it has occasionally deleted a post at random, this seems to be happening more frequently. So, looking forward to the upcoming switch to more reliable technology.
posted evening of August 8th, 2007: Respond
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So this evening, for the first time ever Sylvia told me "I want to ride my bike." -- Til now I have been encouraging her a lot to go out with me and practice riding, but she's been a little reluctant. Well tonight, it was a whole new deal. She's riding! For as long as 6 revolutions of the pedals, by my count, before she put her feet down on the ground to stop the bike. A couple of times she was even successfully stopping using the brakes. So exciting. Update: Some pictures of Sylvia riding.
posted evening of August 8th, 2007: Respond
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Monday, August 6th, 2007
I created a Flicker set of Sylvia's self-portraits. Am I mistaken or is this the most charming thing ever? I don't think I'm mistaken.
posted evening of August 6th, 2007: Respond
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I'm finding it kind of unbearable to think that no song-parodist has ever recorded a takeoff on The Band's "Acadian Driftwood" with a chorus that starts "Canadian bacon, pepper-o-ni..." or "Canadian whiskey, six-pack Molson..." Weird Al, where are you when we need you?
posted morning of August 6th, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, August 5th, 2007
So I signed up to play in The Stirling Duo's fall chamber music workshop, which Mike recommended to me -- we'll be playing Corelli's Concerto Grosso Opus 6 #7, pleasant and challenging.
posted evening of August 5th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Fiddling
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It was a pleasant surprise this evening to find Sylvia trying to work out "Perpetual Motion" in D, on the piano. She knows it in A and in D on the violin, where the two keys are of course much more similar to each other; and in A on the piano. (Just now she was playing it on the violin in G!) I think that's pretty cool. She might actually be better suited to piano playing than to violin -- I think soon we will check with her and see if she'd like to be taking piano lessons. (It's funny because piano instruction of course starts out in key of C, and A is relatively difficult -- she only learned A because she wanted to play her violin songs on piano.)
posted afternoon of August 5th, 2007: Respond
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Lots of new pictures up at our Flicker site, mostly of Sylvia's and Ellen's weekend in the country, mostly pictures Sylvia took of the county fair.
posted afternoon of August 5th, 2007: Respond
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Hm. All morning I'm feeling like there's something I ought to be doing but I can't work out what it is. I finished and installed the bench -- will post a picture of it later, when Ellen brings the camera home -- and a piece of fence I was working on -- I could not find my bottle of linseed oil so I went over to Home Depot this morning and bought a can of Watco Teak Oil, which seems like it ought to work pretty well -- it gave the oak bench a nice color. Swept the patio, walked the dogs, tidied the kitchen. Well, for want of knowing what to do I think I will sit out on my new bench with some coffee and read more Snow. (I'm enjoying the pace at which I'm reading it, which I think would feel too slow with a lot of books.) Update:Here's the pictures of the bench.
posted afternoon of August 5th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, August 4th, 2007
This morning I finished up a woodworking project that has been sitting in my basement for a week or so -- it is an oaken bench that will go in my front yard next to the garden -- tomorrow I will take it outside and put linseed oil on it. Bob and Greg came over in the afternoon and we played some music, including a very nice version of "House of the Rising Sun" -- I have finally persuaded Bob to play it in 4/4 time (like Dylan) instead of (I think) 6/8, like The Animals, which sounds corny to my ear, at least when done by somebody who is not The Animals.
posted evening of August 4th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Music
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