Home and Pensive on a Friday Night

I'm afraid I'm getting too thin...  If you looked at me, that might sound ridiculous, but I've never lived eating as little as I lately have been.  It's not fun to feel deprived of food, even by a tiny bit.

How I would love a day of doing nothing.  I don't remember the last time I spent a Saturday at home, and tomorrow won't be one, either.

This semester has continued to be the best, despite all the work piling in this month.  Thank the Lord for the enormous amount of blessings.

2/28 Deep inside a marble mine -- felt like I was on a different planet

3/9 With Tenisha, former roommate and one of my best friends, on a girls' night out

3/16 Satisfying my Five Guys craving on a lovely spring afternoon

3/23 On a double date with my dear roommate Phoeny

4/10 Friday night in with Kyle and Phoeny

Another painting I want to paint, whenever that will be:  a smiling girl walking along a sidewalk shaded by green oak trees, holding a bouquet of flowers high up with butterflies fluttering along the trail of fragrance.

Choi's Symphony No. 1

If I could compose a symphony, it'd be a piece depicting a satisfying spaghetti meal.  (Apparently I'm not noble enough to compose one depicting famine and promote charity toward starving communities.)  Each movement would express the taste of the food with sound:

I.  Bread and Oil  (with little frills of conversation throughout)
II.  Spaghetti and Wine   (one can only imagine)
III.  Tiramisu   (with sighs of satisfaction in the beginning)

Thought about going with gelato, but I think tiramisu would yield a more festive finale.

Who knows, maybe I really will compose one someday.

Spring Peace

Peace during what should be a stressful time is the most wonderful kind.

Just took a midterm (albeit a 15-minute one... how nice) this morning, and gearing up to study for tomorrow's real midterm (in thermodynamics) soon.  But between that, a pleasant-as-ever advising appointment with Dr. Hawman and a visit to Dr. Wyld's office.  Talked about my undergraduate thesis options.  I think I will research something along the lines of metamorphosed guano (bird poop or, in this case, pterosaur poop) that have to do with the history of Caribbean tectonics!  Also, pretty much secured a  new job to replace my athlete-tutoring job after Field School.  Can't say enough how much I love our department...

Seventy-two degrees and sunny, breeze wafting, birds chirping, bees bumbling, basil dancing.  To that backdrop, a toasty veggie burger and arugula salad for lunch.

Why is life so good...  why??  Ah, this peace couldn't be anything but God's grace.  Praise the Lord!!

All right, physics through the day and night, then I'm going out tomorrow.  Yessss.

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I want to paint a picture of green trees and bright dots of birds.

Until Lemons Become Sweet

Every woman needs to watch this.  It will be worth your time.  She starts out looking like she's gonna sing, but it's actually spoken word poetry (which is SO much cooler than it sounds).

From a 2005 Def Poetry show:

Watched so many great poems (watch a poem? strange eh?) today with two great girls.  I am surprised spoken word poetry is so little known... this stuff is amazing!

Music Genres

I've been taking a History and Analysis of Rock Music class this semester.  I have a better understanding of rock's types and (fascinating) roots, but I don't have a newfound higher respect for it.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy rock music (and its roots, especially soul, funk, and Motown now...), but respect is different.  Most rock, like pop, is just so... ephemeral?

I do love jazz.  I respect jazz.  Which is weird, because with all its improvisations it is even more "ephemeral."  But I think I respect it more because I am not good at improvising (especially with a group? My goodness) and a good live performance just makes my jaw drop (figuratively).  It's also so abstract.  I think that's what I like about it.  Especially in instrumental jazz, nothing but the title is labeled, and everything else is a just pure juicing-out of feelings, thoughts, and whims through sounds and motions.  Good vocal jazz is amazing too, especially with great scat singing (lyrics are so overrated, ha).  Usually you have to know a good bit about something to love it, but I know almost nothing about jazz (I would love to take a jazz history class, or jazz piano lessons, dang!), and I still absolutely love it.

And of course, there is classical music, which is the almighty genre.  It's like Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel, whereas rock/pop/etc. are like cartoons (cartoons can be great -- these analogies are purely personal!)... I don't know what kind of visual art jazz corresponds to.  Anyway, I have to enjoy and respect classical music a whole lot because I have been learning it my whole life.

Okay, take-home points:  Rock music can only get so respectable on my list, no matter how much I learn about it.  Jazz is great, even though I know so little about it.  Classical music will always have the top spot.  Rock, pop, country, all those other 3-minute-radio-style genres are roughly in the same group to me. (Who invited this snob?)

One thing I want to and should explore:  opera!  I've never been to one.  La Boheme is being done at school soon... I hope to make it!

Okay, enough, I'm going to sleep.

동요

So much more than a "nursery rhyme."

In my humble, completely unbiased opinion, Korea has the most beautiful children's songs.

Woke up and got a sudden urge to look up the forgotten lyrics to one of the first songs I ever learned.  My grandma taught me "과수원 길," meaning orchard lane.  Here's a meager translation:

In the orchard lane outside the village
Acacia flowers are in full bloom
White petals blow like snowflakes
Sweet fragrance rides the breeze
We speechlessly smile at each other
In the white acacia-laden orchard lane of long ago

Then, of course, I proceeded to look up a dozen others buried in my memory and sing them.  Most I got to the end, some I cried halfway.  HAHA!  'Tis my spring break...

Anyway, I had to stop after coming to this one.  "My Favorite Word"... I sang that at the school contest in forth grade.  The songwriter's favorite word, apparently, was "mother."

These songs are meant for children, but their meanings get deeper as I grow older.  What did I ever think about these lyrics while learning and singing them for the first time?  Certainly not much...  What did I know about some sentimental flowery memory of "long ago"?  (Heck, I probably still don't.)  I guess adults compose these songs for children because they enjoy listening to these beautiful lyrics sung by pure, innocent voices.

Oh, Korea.  I think of you fondly for sentimental and heritage-y reasons.  But probably not for much other.

Still/Here

My dance appreciation course has been a lighthearted, liberal discussion/video class about everything from Louis XIV to orgasms.  "Oh look, pretty ballerinas!"  "Dang, so that's what The Rite of Spring looks like."  "Cool African dance."

Today's class was so different, at least to me.  The documentary we watched was one of the most moving I'd ever watched.  It carried a meaning to me that was a hundred times deeper than any other dance or choreographer did.  Bill T. Jones, having lost his lover to HIV and being HIV-positive himself in 1994, gathered men and women with serious illnesses and asked them to express themselves through their bodies, along with narration.  He observed, interviewed, and personally got to know these people over a period of time and used their stories and movements as inspiration for a dance piece.  

The documentary only showed a few minutes of the actual dance performed by professional dancers.  It focused instead on the making.  (I want to watch the entire dance someday.)  He asked each of the cancer/AIDS/etc. patients:  What do you love?  What do you fear?  What do you want?  While watching the video I stared to think about my own answers.  One thing came to mind surprisingly immediately, given that there are so many things to love.  That's where I got started.  I will finish on here.

I love music.  I love love.  I love the sunshine, trees, and the sky.

I fear falling away from God.  There is nothing scarier.  

I want to show myself and the world that reason will not outsmart God.  I want to love more.

He also asked the participants to walk out a "map" of their lives, their hills and valleys, quite literally.  Then he asked them to elaborate on thoughts of their death... their "dream death," in a way.  They commonly tended to describe some light.  One guy said he imagines sounds of waves and fog horn.  I really, really like that idea.  

My dream death.  Me, old, a small group of my loved ones who are young and healthy.  A quiet cottage by the sea, where I can hear the waves and seagulls.  I tell each person that I love him/her.  Then it will be the moment I had anticipated since I was 18.  To close my eyes and put my hand in His and rise and join my mother...

It was one of the most inspiring things to see, how he made dance therapeutic...  directly therapeutic to the participant patients, including himself, and therapeutic to the audience.  If anything could be used as therapy like that... wouldn't that be heavenly?

Fighting against a disease, fighting against anything in life, we are all survivors, you know?  The above people showed how they continue to be still here, and, although on a much less desperate degree, I will continue to be still here, and...