I'm flyingggggggggggg

I was sitting in this airport a year and a week ago. I had just auditioned for the school that I almost went to and it was snowing. I remember watching the snow blow across the concrete of the airport, rivers and streams of hypnotic movement.

I was sitting in this airport a year minus a month ago. It was snowing, again, and the snow was blowing. I had just auditioned at the school I currently go to; it was quite possibly the worst audition I did last year.

I was sitting in this airport a year and a half ago. I was coming back from a music camp, and there were storms all up and down the east coast. My flight was delayed; I waited all afternoon, and got home after midnight.

I know this airport. I know where the bagel stand is, where the newsstands are, at which gates you can find wifi. I know the trek between the two gates, the endless-seeming tunnel of steel and dead, mechanical voices. I know that you can never expect your plane to be on time. I've run from a flight that was delayed coming in to my connection that would be leaving in twenty minutes, expecting to miss it, only to find that that flight was delayed for the next three hours. I've had gate agents ask me if I'm carrying a violin, a viola, a guitar. I've waited with family and friends, I've waited alone.


It was the best of airports, it was the worst of airports.

I'm going home.

peace, solitude, loneliness

On Saturday morning, I woke up and thought I was at home. The dorms were quiet; no one was showering, going up and down the stairs, slamming doors, talking. All but a handful of people were gone by Sunday morning. I have a late final, so am one of the last people here, and it's a strange feeling - somewhat isolated, actually, since I've mostly stayed in my room the past few days, studying and practicing and whatnot. Moments, though, feel more familiar, like being woken up at 6AM by someone yelling in Chinese outside my room as they moved suitcases down the stairwell.

I picked up a cold last week, probably caused by a few too many late nights spent hanging out with my friends. It's still lingering, despite the twelve or so cups of tea I've consumed in the past few days.

Speaking of which, I've developed a real love for tea these past few weeks.

I went to a performance of the Messiah done by the local symphony orchestra, which is one of the best in the world. They did it baroque-style, with a countertenor singing the alto parts, and it was beautiful.

I miss my friends, both those who go to school with me and those who are a thousand miles away. I'm ready to sleep in my own bed and my own room again, to shower without zoris, to eat better food than served in the cafeteria (where, by the way, they've gone into leftover mode).

I took a walk today. It's been nice the past few days, slightly warmer - 40 F or so. Something about the quality of the sunlight, the temperature, the smell of mud in the air reminded me of a birdwatching trip I took with my mother when I was younger. I don't remember where it was or what birds I saw.

I need to practice.

Snow

This is what the world looked like last week.

dilemmas

The campus cafeteria generally has three types of fruit: bananas, apples, and oranges. Sometimes they have unripe pears, too. Once they may have had plums, but those may just have been strange-looking apples. The apples are generally bruised and sometimes wormy; the bananas are sometimes good and sometimes bruised. The oranges tend to be ugly-looking but tasty.

I've been eating a lot of oranges lately because of this, and a lot of them have this funny-looking knob of orange-flesh at the top (or maybe it's the bottom, I'm not a student of orange anatomy). What is one supposed to do with that? Should I eat it? Generally I can't get the peel off of that section, so I leave it. Such a waste of orange, though.

I have the same problem with the little black thing when you open the banana the way it's supposed to be opened, by pinching the non-stem end. I generally break it off and leave it, but it gets messy.

SNOW

IT'S SNOWING THIS IS AMAZING.




Yeah, I grew up in the south, why do you ask?

(picture is from last year, actually - one of the few times it's ever snowed in Cowtown, where I grew up)

Dorm life

Semi-hypocritical self-righteousness:

• Dear vocalists: I love the Magic Flute as much as the next person (heh heh heh), but when you've been blasting it in the lounge all afternoon, my tolerance will be very low when you come in after quiet hours and start singing.
• Dear woodwinds and violist: Remember what I was saying to the vocalists about quiet hours being, you know, quiet? That goes for talking outside my door, too.
• Dear roommate: Your theory teacher did not give you a B because she hates you. She gave you a B because you missed 4 questions out of 20 on one part of the test, and forgot some accidentals (equivalent to using a similar-sounding / similar-spelled but wrong word on a foreign language test) on the dictation.
• Dear whoever uses the second stall in the bathroom: Flush, please.

Things I like about the dorm:

• Being around my friends, all the time.
• Being able to wake up at 7:28 and be on time for a 7:30 class, as roommate has done a few times.
• Not having to clean the bathrooms.
• Whoever put the "please do not masturbate in the showers, the drains can't take it" signs in the boy's bathroom.
• Toilets that flush automatically, most of the time
  
• The lounge
• Friends

after 4ish hours of practice

So I'm thinking that my fingerboard and / or strings might be getting a bit schmutzic...

Why I'm an atheist

My roommate is a fundamentalist Christian, and toward the beginning of the year we had a conversation in which she asked how I could stand to live without God. This is how:

I am an atheist because I do not believe that the existence of some god, a superhuman, supernatural being, omnipotent and omniscient, creator of everything, is at all likely. Where would such a being come from? If such a being exists, why hasn't he/she revealed him/herself in an unmistakable manner? Forget these "God whispers in my head," I want lightning bolts coming from glowing figures in the clouds.

I am an atheist because I think that humans don't need the help, both for the horrible acts and the beautiful. To me, that the human mind can create the Pyramids, Starry Night, television, the steam engine is more wonderful and terrifying than any god.

I am an atheist because I take responsibility for my actions. No God will come clean up my messes, fix my boo-boos, make me pass a test I haven't studied for, save the rainforest. That is up to me. It would be comforting to believe that everything would magically get better, but the problems would still be there. It's up to us to take action.

I am an atheist because religion does not offer answers. "It's God's will" does not cure the sick or help us understand the universe or tell us why we're the way we are. There, science rules, and religion just adds a further step of complication.

I am an atheist because I do not need to believe in a deity to behave morally.

I am an atheist because I believe that promoting xenophobia is reprehensible; because I believe that condemning someone to torture for different beliefs is childish and petty; because I believe that obliging half of the population to live as second-class citizens due to their genitalia is repugnant; because I believe that life is more precious than any doctrine or dogma.

I am an atheist because I am not such a special snowflake that the universe cares whether my team wins, or what I do on Sundays, or what I drink, or if I cover my hair, or who I sleep with, or what I believe. My mother does care, though.

I am an atheist because no god who allows war / famine / genocide / natural disasters to occur and millions to starve is worth worshiping.

I am an atheist because the knowledge that this life is all I get inspires me to make the most of it. If we lived eternally, I would have no motivation to accomplish anything of worth - there'd always be tomorrow - but with no afterlife, making a positive contribution to the world (and enjoying myself now) becomes all the more important.

I am an atheist because I find more peace in playing unaccompanied Bach or watching birds than in rituals and superstition.

I am an atheist.

(so I'm also in a late-night-philosophizing mood and taking myself too seriously, so sue me)