Dedication

Thou art my soul, thou art my heart;
Thou both my joy, and sadness art
Thou art my world, where I am mover,
my heav'n art thou wherein I hover thou art my grave,
wherein I cast forever all my sorrow past!

Thou art my rest my peace protecting
thou art from heav'n my life directing.
Make me by worth, thy love to own!
Thy glance to me myself hath shown!
Thou'rt ever round me hov'ring by,
My guardian sprite, my better

Thou art my soul thou art my heart;
thou both my joy and sadness art;
thou art my world, where I am mover,
my heav'n art thou wherein I hover
my guardian sprite, my better I!

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"Dedication" was composed by Robert Schumann for his wife Clara and then transcribed by Franz List. What is usually played by performers these days is Liszt's transcriptions. I've never seen the movie "Song of Love" before, but I hope to find it soon. For now, I'll settle with YouTube. Good Lord, thank you for YouTube.

I'm looking for the Chopin film my instructor let me see on laser disc when I was a teenager. I realized how much of a nationalistic genius Chopin was (Polonaises & Revolutionary Etudes for Poland) and how neurotic/emotionally complicated he probably was. If it weren't for his benefactress (I forgot her name), his genius wouldn't be known. I remember a scene where Chopin & Liszt played in 3 (or was it 4) pianos. I'm just not sure if it was based on actual events.

I tried playing Scherzo in Bbm and I couldn't play all of it. I forgot how to play the last part so I took my piece and saw that my Chopin book was yellow & brown and the last page had a dog ear-shaped torn section. I can't say I'm sentimental, but I'm dependent on the specific piece that I read. Sure, I can probably find one online but it wouldn't be the same as the actual piece I first studied. It wouldn't be the same.

Plus, to add to that sad discovery, I can't find a video of my debut recital. I just turned 18 years old and my mother had just passed away that same year, 2 months before my 18th birthday. So my father thought that I should have a solo recital after Christmas and make it a fund-raising event for our local parish. A somewhat known designer was a parishioner and donated my recital gown, which I've kept until today. It's a long, corseted, lavender strapless gown. On hindsight, I don't think I can pull off my hour-long repertoire. That was the last time I ever played without sight-reading. I don't know why. I do remember not liking the whole solo recital thing, I think I was overwhelmed with sadness the entire time. I was kind of singing about it with my hands. Rehearsals & the actual event was a blur. I just wanted to obey my father (because he really meant well) but the truth was that I was dealing with a lot that year; my mother's death plus school (where that specific semester ruined my chances of getting Latin honors) plus church choir plus college chorale.

I'm glad that piano is in my life. I'm glad classical music understands & consoles me.

Uhm

Hmmmm...
What is up with the cosmos?

broccoli, strawberries & honey

Click on the photo and visit the incredible photo blog that is lantaw.blogspot.com

For the third time in two years, I had the fortunate chance to go up to Baguio and enjoy the cold weather with my extended family. I love the cold. I love the vegetables. I love the mountains. I love the local pine trees. I love strawberries in various states of freshness. Boom di yada...and so the Discovery channel song goes.

But prior to going up the Cordillera mountains, we made a short stop at Manaoag, Pangasinan to makea pilgrimage to Our Lady of Manaoag Church with the enshrined statue of Mary brought centuries ago by Spanish friars and is known to be miraculous. It's akin to lining up at the mall waiting for your turn to sit on Santa's lap and enumerating your wish list. Except that Santa's not fake or under the authority of mall management...and you enumerate all sorts of things from wishes to apologies to being armed with a whole lot of virtues.

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Not to say that I'm shifting to a travel blog or whatnot, because frankly, I still haven't traveled enough to be considered a pundit...even by yours truly. I've only reached up to Vigan, Ilocos Sur on the north and Cagayan De Oro on the south. And those two trips were parental-unit initiated. I'm mostly in between those two areas in the country.

I have a platonic relationship with traveling. I have no amorous, uncontrollable, sporadic urge to pack light, pretend to be a nomad and actually put those ideas into action. It's just not me. I'm not a Cain. I'm an Abel, in that annoying "I prefer to settle and farm in this place." There has to be a clear direction or purpose to my traveling. Even if I sometimes tell myself that I'd bring a rucksack and go backpacking around Europe in an instant (subject to availability of funds and some sort of multiple entry Schengen Visa), in reality, I'd be the list-making, booking reservations type of person leaving tracks whether via email or social networking with the attempt to appear as if I'm just making historical accounts when in fact, I'm 40% scared of organized crime involving human trafficking.

But hey, it's all about overcoming your fear. Like bungee jumping or riding the Viper on Six Flags when you're afraid of heights.

horrid bunch of nitpicking crustaceans

In my country, being called a crab is insulting. But invertebrates do not constitute the gist of this post. To the people who have made much ado with my weight loss which has made my regular response close to a monotonous tape-recorded message ala stephen hawking, stop saying things that obviously aim to make me feel bad but which I obviously know to be some repugnant method of bitter projection of the desire to lose visible body mass. It didn't happen overnight. It involved immense stress triggering a series of hormonal & physiological responses resulting to 2 hospitalizations and invasive medical tests & interventions. I've lost my appetite & I can't have coffee. Am I unhappy about the weight loss? No. Am I happy that I lost weight? Yes. Did I intend the processes leading to the weight loss to happen? No. I did not inoculate my tonsils with a drug-resistant bacterium, I did not insert a stone in my gall bladder, I did not inject cortisol in my system to have a jolt of stress, I did not drink hydrochloric acid to annoy my stomach. The secret to succesful weight loss? Excessive human contact & waste of spoken language. A hybrid of which is the tactless Homo sapiens (can't italicize the scientific name on mobile blogger). I'm a whiny, hormonal female dog right now so don't push my buttons. I bite like a shark.