![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
And the freezing rain fell down from the heavens, and all the earth was covered in crystal. And the people came out and danced in the streets. Awkwardly. And without music. That is, the freezing rain made me twenty minutes late to work, so to make up for it on my last day, I stayed twenty min
utes extra. By that time I was completely too tired to head to aikido afterwards, even if the dojo was holding its informal "party."
God rest you, merry sales staff, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can tell for pay.
Whatever they do, it ain't the worst at the end of the day...
I was singing that before a customer came to the deli, as Mysteryperson#1 had started whistling "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen". I stopped to turn to the customer. "Can I help you?" "Can you continue the concert?" I was a little flustered. "It's hard to go on improvising lyrics on the fly." "But that is what makes it fun!" He is a regular, fortunately; I have not scared him away. I did sing over the slicer during the next lady's order, although the words I was singing were those I had composed in my last year of high school (actually, in the Bagelshop parking lot, while pondering the meaning of "let nothing you dismay." They were printed in the Acta very badly; I print them here. To all the teachers of the world, I dedicate:
God rest you merry, math teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can write or say,
From “seven times seven is fourteen” to limits gone astray...
All you ask is for equations to be true and defined,
And for all the equals signs to be aligned.
God rest you merry, English teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can write or say,
In rules of grammar and common sense that students disobey...
All you ask is that commas all go in their proper place
And that Hamlet’s not misquoted to his face.
God rest you merry, language teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can write or say,
From misspellings to brutal forms of passé composé...
All you ask is not to use vocab whose meaning is in doubt
And to at least get what the story was about.
God rest you, social science teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can write or say,
From “where is the Atlantic?” to a thesis-less essay...
All you ask is for a clear, logical and balanced view
And for all the facts to be confirmed and true.
God rest you merry, science teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can write or say,
From graphs on hand-drawn graph paper to vectors the wrong way...
All you ask is for the sig figs to be valid and trim
And for no one in the lab to lose a limb.
God rest you merry, arts teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can draw or play,
From art not worth the paper to A-flat instead of A...
All you ask is that they practice, - just a little, is that fair?
All you ask is that they work and try and care.
God rest you merry, high school students, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed tortures one can’t even begin to say,
And four tests and a summative set all on the same day...
All you ask is for the answers to be marked fair and right
And for at least eight hours of sleep a night.
Which hopefully is what I will be getting for a few days, as this is over now. I finally departed the Bagelshop, assuring the boss that I will not come back for the Monday and Tuesday. "I still have textbooks to buy and stuff." Mysteryperson#1, on hearing this, remarked that I should have simply said I needed time off. Being too specific made it seem too small a requirement.
I used my last discount for now to stock up on Republic of Tea teas - Pomegranate Green Tea and Maté Latte, out of curiosity - and a sparkling nonalcoholic beverage for us to welcome New Year with. Last year, when I had worked on New Year's Eve, the boss served up a glass of champagne all around, and I reprimanded him for offering nothing for those who do not drink. He then provided me with an entire bottle of a very nice sparkling cider, which ended up being a hit at the welcoming of 2005. But I digress.
The next day I woke fairly early, and after taking care of the morning necessities, I headed off to take care of various errands. Those who reprimand my jewelry obsession, take a breath: I bought shoes this time. Really nice dark blue Adelphi shoes, hard to find that colour, and comfy (a character dancer test-driving shoes is an interesting sight), and I have had my eye on them ever since they came in, and they were now 25% off. The common advice is to never buy stuff on sale that you would not have bought at the regular price. I follow that advice pretty faithfully: after all, if you buy a pair of $200 jeans marked down to $150, did you save $50 or did you spend $150? My mathematician's mind asserts the latter (and I have never bought $200 jeans, on sale or otherwise. I don't even own jeans anymore. I tried some on today. But that is another story, and they were under $20, and I did not buy them.)
A mysterious force made me wander into Tristan & America at the Rideau Centre that day. As I perused expensive stuff I would never wear, I suddenly saw a salesgirl dancing on the floor to the piped Muzak. I laughed, and she looked at me, a little embarrassed. "I do that," she said. "No, I do the same thing," I replied, thrilled at finding kin in my insanity.
Then looking around, I saw my coworker Carrie in the store, here to find a tie for her boyfriend. She teased me that she would have expected to see me at the jewelry stores. "That's on the itinerary," I joked back. We promised we will see each other next week, and then parted. I went back to perusing shirts, when I recognised a melody on the radio.
Everyone has heard "Killing Me Softly," that so frequently covered song, at least once. I heard it for the first time in my sleep. Back when all of us kids shared the same room, my brother collected vinyl records; some of them we still have, although I think the record player is gone. He put on "Killing Me Softly" when I was still asleep, and somehow my sleepy brain processed the meaning of the words and integrated them into my dream. I saw "this young boy, a stranger to my eye," only in the dream he was associated with the remains of a city after an annihilating fire, and the boy was a psychic who can tell you about your life when feeling your face with his finger (a mishearing of the lyric I believed in until very recently).
I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him
To listen for a while
And there he was this young boy
A stranger to my eyes
"Strumming my pain with his fingers," the salesgirl who had danced sang along. On the other side of the clothing rack, I joined in: "Singing my life with his words..."
"How can you not sing along to that?" she cried.
"When all of your coworkers rally together to tell you not to?" I arched my eyebrows, laughing from long experience. I am normal! Well, not alone, that is.
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly... with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly.
With his song.
I felt all flushed with fever
Embarrassed by the crowd
I felt he found my letters
And read each one out loud
I prayed that he would finish
But he just kept right on
Strumming my pain with his fingers,
Singing my life with his words,
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly... with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly.
With his song.
He sang as if he knew me
In all my dark despair,
And then he looked right through me
As if I wasn't there,
But he was there, this stranger
Singing clear and strong,
Strumming my pain with his fingers,
Singing my life with his words,
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly... with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly.
With his song.
Well, all my dark despair is something I do not have now, thank God. And the vast majority of my letters are humorous or businesslike; the ones I sent to Professor Sebbar, my Complex Analysis assignments , would make particularly interesting "strumming my pain with his fingers...singing clear and strong." But today I went back to Tristan & America, hoping to see this girl again, but she wasn't there. This time on the Muzak I heard some hiphop song by a female artist, which heavily sampled, of all things, "If I Were A Rich Man" from the musical Fiddler on the Roof. I sang along as soon as I confirmed that this was so, that songs from the musical based on the Sholom Aleichem stories about a poor Russian Jew milkman are now sung by American, likely black, hiphop artists. Interesting.
How many of us are there, the people who dance and sing, "those who dance, (who) are called insane by those who cannot hear the music"? It came to me, on the eve of a new year, that I could have sung my life.
"How you meet the New Year is how you will spend it," the Russian superstition goes. If that extends to the millennium, I am going to spend the millennium watching old movies, I guess. Last year (2005) I met in the company of not my personal friends but very nice people nevertheless; and perhaps that is how I spent most of the year. This year I declined an invitation to join an old friend and his new friends at a pub for New Year's - I would rather spend it with my family. Watching old movies, or comedies. Writing. Publishing.
My New Year's Resolutions:
1. I will attend more aikido. I will get my fourth kyu, and hopefully my third and onwards.
2. I will get into dance ensemble performances.
3. I will submit my novel, with the blessing of my editors, whom I love and wish a happy new year to.
4. I will ski lots.
5. I will play more trivia, to keep the edge up.
6. I will take the trivia team to Chicago and through a successful Reach season.
7. I will stretch daily.
8. I will edit more.
9. I will try to finally learn to drive. My New Year's resolution for 2007 has better be to learn to drive, because my license expires then.
10. I will tell the nicest people who are not right for me the truth about that as soon as I figure it out myself.
11. I will not buy so much jewelry (well, I do leave myself a loophole that the jewelry I do buy may be more expensive than in past years.)
12. I will never assume that a subject exam or test is going to be easy. I will study. Although two exams on the same day is very hard.
13. I will not let a single comment, even by someone I respect, even by someone I love and adore, ruin my view of something I love.
14. I will write to please myself. Let the math people whine that there is too much jewelry talk, and the shopping people whine that there is too much math talk, and the linguists whine that I don't only talk of linguistics, and all of them whine that there is too much poetry and song lyrics and translations. I write for love first and foremost, not to please them all. But if I am writing incomprehensible sentences, I won't dig my heels in.
15. I will not break myself to keep a promise.
16. I will not drink cheap tea.
17. I will keep in touch with my friends (by the way, the next post will be dedicated to what happened yesterday, and I will title it "A Ferrari Full of Geishas"). Perhaps this blog is a satisfactory way of fulfilling that.
18. I will take care of any pains as soon as possible after they happen.
19. I will make a sincere effort not to yell at my parents. Even when I am really stressed out.
20. I will not let interest charges collect on my credit card (not that I did this year, but this is a preemptive resolution.)
21. I will remember how to integrate by parts.
22. I will apply for a TA-ship.
23. I will learn to do eight obertas turns in a row.
24. I will not waste my time just because of a man. Any man.
25. I will learn some chiromancy.
26. I will walk more.
Happy 2006, and I wish you joy.
utes extra. By that time I was completely too tired to head to aikido afterwards, even if the dojo was holding its informal "party."
God rest you, merry sales staff, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can tell for pay.
Whatever they do, it ain't the worst at the end of the day...
I was singing that before a customer came to the deli, as Mysteryperson#1 had started whistling "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen". I stopped to turn to the customer. "Can I help you?" "Can you continue the concert?" I was a little flustered. "It's hard to go on improvising lyrics on the fly." "But that is what makes it fun!" He is a regular, fortunately; I have not scared him away. I did sing over the slicer during the next lady's order, although the words I was singing were those I had composed in my last year of high school (actually, in the Bagelshop parking lot, while pondering the meaning of "let nothing you dismay." They were printed in the Acta very badly; I print them here. To all the teachers of the world, I dedicate:
God rest you merry, math teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can write or say,
From “seven times seven is fourteen” to limits gone astray...
All you ask is for equations to be true and defined,
And for all the equals signs to be aligned.
God rest you merry, English teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can write or say,
In rules of grammar and common sense that students disobey...
All you ask is that commas all go in their proper place
And that Hamlet’s not misquoted to his face.
God rest you merry, language teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can write or say,
From misspellings to brutal forms of passé composé...
All you ask is not to use vocab whose meaning is in doubt
And to at least get what the story was about.
God rest you, social science teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can write or say,
From “where is the Atlantic?” to a thesis-less essay...
All you ask is for a clear, logical and balanced view
And for all the facts to be confirmed and true.
God rest you merry, science teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can write or say,
From graphs on hand-drawn graph paper to vectors the wrong way...
All you ask is for the sig figs to be valid and trim
And for no one in the lab to lose a limb.
God rest you merry, arts teachers, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed all the horrors one can draw or play,
From art not worth the paper to A-flat instead of A...
All you ask is that they practice, - just a little, is that fair?
All you ask is that they work and try and care.
God rest you merry, high school students, let nothing you dismay,
For you have witnessed tortures one can’t even begin to say,
And four tests and a summative set all on the same day...
All you ask is for the answers to be marked fair and right
And for at least eight hours of sleep a night.
Which hopefully is what I will be getting for a few days, as this is over now. I finally departed the Bagelshop, assuring the boss that I will not come back for the Monday and Tuesday. "I still have textbooks to buy and stuff." Mysteryperson#1, on hearing this, remarked that I should have simply said I needed time off. Being too specific made it seem too small a requirement.
I used my last discount for now to stock up on Republic of Tea teas - Pomegranate Green Tea and Maté Latte, out of curiosity - and a sparkling nonalcoholic beverage for us to welcome New Year with. Last year, when I had worked on New Year's Eve, the boss served up a glass of champagne all around, and I reprimanded him for offering nothing for those who do not drink. He then provided me with an entire bottle of a very nice sparkling cider, which ended up being a hit at the welcoming of 2005. But I digress.
The next day I woke fairly early, and after taking care of the morning necessities, I headed off to take care of various errands. Those who reprimand my jewelry obsession, take a breath: I bought shoes this time. Really nice dark blue Adelphi shoes, hard to find that colour, and comfy (a character dancer test-driving shoes is an interesting sight), and I have had my eye on them ever since they came in, and they were now 25% off. The common advice is to never buy stuff on sale that you would not have bought at the regular price. I follow that advice pretty faithfully: after all, if you buy a pair of $200 jeans marked down to $150, did you save $50 or did you spend $150? My mathematician's mind asserts the latter (and I have never bought $200 jeans, on sale or otherwise. I don't even own jeans anymore. I tried some on today. But that is another story, and they were under $20, and I did not buy them.)
A mysterious force made me wander into Tristan & America at the Rideau Centre that day. As I perused expensive stuff I would never wear, I suddenly saw a salesgirl dancing on the floor to the piped Muzak. I laughed, and she looked at me, a little embarrassed. "I do that," she said. "No, I do the same thing," I replied, thrilled at finding kin in my insanity.
Then looking around, I saw my coworker Carrie in the store, here to find a tie for her boyfriend. She teased me that she would have expected to see me at the jewelry stores. "That's on the itinerary," I joked back. We promised we will see each other next week, and then parted. I went back to perusing shirts, when I recognised a melody on the radio.
Everyone has heard "Killing Me Softly," that so frequently covered song, at least once. I heard it for the first time in my sleep. Back when all of us kids shared the same room, my brother collected vinyl records; some of them we still have, although I think the record player is gone. He put on "Killing Me Softly" when I was still asleep, and somehow my sleepy brain processed the meaning of the words and integrated them into my dream. I saw "this young boy, a stranger to my eye," only in the dream he was associated with the remains of a city after an annihilating fire, and the boy was a psychic who can tell you about your life when feeling your face with his finger (a mishearing of the lyric I believed in until very recently).
I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him
To listen for a while
And there he was this young boy
A stranger to my eyes
"Strumming my pain with his fingers," the salesgirl who had danced sang along. On the other side of the clothing rack, I joined in: "Singing my life with his words..."
"How can you not sing along to that?" she cried.
"When all of your coworkers rally together to tell you not to?" I arched my eyebrows, laughing from long experience. I am normal! Well, not alone, that is.
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly... with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly.
With his song.
I felt all flushed with fever
Embarrassed by the crowd
I felt he found my letters
And read each one out loud
I prayed that he would finish
But he just kept right on
Strumming my pain with his fingers,
Singing my life with his words,
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly... with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly.
With his song.
He sang as if he knew me
In all my dark despair,
And then he looked right through me
As if I wasn't there,
But he was there, this stranger
Singing clear and strong,
Strumming my pain with his fingers,
Singing my life with his words,
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly... with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly.
With his song.
Well, all my dark despair is something I do not have now, thank God. And the vast majority of my letters are humorous or businesslike; the ones I sent to Professor Sebbar, my Complex Analysis assignments , would make particularly interesting "strumming my pain with his fingers...singing clear and strong." But today I went back to Tristan & America, hoping to see this girl again, but she wasn't there. This time on the Muzak I heard some hiphop song by a female artist, which heavily sampled, of all things, "If I Were A Rich Man" from the musical Fiddler on the Roof. I sang along as soon as I confirmed that this was so, that songs from the musical based on the Sholom Aleichem stories about a poor Russian Jew milkman are now sung by American, likely black, hiphop artists. Interesting.
How many of us are there, the people who dance and sing, "those who dance, (who) are called insane by those who cannot hear the music"? It came to me, on the eve of a new year, that I could have sung my life.
"How you meet the New Year is how you will spend it," the Russian superstition goes. If that extends to the millennium, I am going to spend the millennium watching old movies, I guess. Last year (2005) I met in the company of not my personal friends but very nice people nevertheless; and perhaps that is how I spent most of the year. This year I declined an invitation to join an old friend and his new friends at a pub for New Year's - I would rather spend it with my family. Watching old movies, or comedies. Writing. Publishing.
My New Year's Resolutions:
1. I will attend more aikido. I will get my fourth kyu, and hopefully my third and onwards.
2. I will get into dance ensemble performances.
3. I will submit my novel, with the blessing of my editors, whom I love and wish a happy new year to.
4. I will ski lots.
5. I will play more trivia, to keep the edge up.
6. I will take the trivia team to Chicago and through a successful Reach season.
7. I will stretch daily.
8. I will edit more.
9. I will try to finally learn to drive. My New Year's resolution for 2007 has better be to learn to drive, because my license expires then.
10. I will tell the nicest people who are not right for me the truth about that as soon as I figure it out myself.
11. I will not buy so much jewelry (well, I do leave myself a loophole that the jewelry I do buy may be more expensive than in past years.)
12. I will never assume that a subject exam or test is going to be easy. I will study. Although two exams on the same day is very hard.
13. I will not let a single comment, even by someone I respect, even by someone I love and adore, ruin my view of something I love.
14. I will write to please myself. Let the math people whine that there is too much jewelry talk, and the shopping people whine that there is too much math talk, and the linguists whine that I don't only talk of linguistics, and all of them whine that there is too much poetry and song lyrics and translations. I write for love first and foremost, not to please them all. But if I am writing incomprehensible sentences, I won't dig my heels in.
15. I will not break myself to keep a promise.
16. I will not drink cheap tea.
17. I will keep in touch with my friends (by the way, the next post will be dedicated to what happened yesterday, and I will title it "A Ferrari Full of Geishas"). Perhaps this blog is a satisfactory way of fulfilling that.
18. I will take care of any pains as soon as possible after they happen.
19. I will make a sincere effort not to yell at my parents. Even when I am really stressed out.
20. I will not let interest charges collect on my credit card (not that I did this year, but this is a preemptive resolution.)
21. I will remember how to integrate by parts.
22. I will apply for a TA-ship.
23. I will learn to do eight obertas turns in a row.
24. I will not waste my time just because of a man. Any man.
25. I will learn some chiromancy.
26. I will walk more.
Happy 2006, and I wish you joy.
Tags: