Fitz is becoming more and more enthusiastic about music. But, only saxophone music.

When I practice, he sends himself into such a frenzy  of drawn-out howls, sharp yaps, and strange half-moaning, half-coughing barks, that I can hardly hear myself over the clamour. If I let him into the house, he races around the living room, a wild look in his eye, making flying leaps on and off of the sofa and generally wreaking havoc, but at least it mostly stops the howls, although sometimes he sits on the carpet at my feet and howls directly at my sax.

The cacophany is absolutely terrific. And I don’t mean that in the positive sense of the word…

So after some 9 months of waiting, usually patiently, though not always; after 9 months of conversations and obstacles and writing and agonizing and Zaubi (and me!) getting all frustrated… today is a memorable day.

Because finally today, the green light has been turned on and we have just gotten our plane tickets for the next great adventure.

It’s a long story, really, how it all came to be, a story that started way back last April during Zaubi’s annual performance review or some such. In any case, the ultimate end is that we are going to be relocating to Zürich for the period of June – January.

Seven months is not in fact a very long time: long enough to get a bit settled, not long enough for anything really useful. It was supposed to be a year originally but it got chopped down. Still – 7 months is nothing to sniff at.

Kifa has kindly offered to look after the dogs during that time but there are still so many administrative type things to deal with in the next few months. Who will look after Elma? Can we find someone to house sit? Should we try to rent out the house or is it not worth it? Can I keep doing any contract work from afar or will June mean the end of kirilisa’s mostly happy two-year stint at CMI?

We’ve been here over three years now: I’ve been in my current job for almost two. Unthinkable! It truly is time to shake things up a bit.

 Hot.

Sitting here after a kind of weird unrestful day, listening to Stan Getz, organising iTunes music library, eating melting creamsicle, sticky-sweaty, wearing a strange headwrap and no underwear, chatting to Kifa, trying to motivate to do something other than the above.

But, isn’t that what summer is for? Kind of?

Got booted from my second, informal, band today. Kind of anyway. I don’t know what kind of politics are going on in there but I get the distinct impression, though it hasn’t been said right out, that the band is undergoing re-org and I’m not welcome anymore. Which is depressing. I can only figure I’m not good enough for them, which is kind of discouraging, as i thought I was. The other tenor sax, a rather grumpy individual, has taken charge and just plain out excluded me. Ok, I get the hint. Ah, well. 

It’s good in a way, as I have been flat out and it’s nice to have an evening at home (I actually cooked tonight! Amazing. Given the high-90s heat and the fact that there is no food in my kitchen) — made muffins tonight, also unsuccessfully, as they did not cook through and are more like pudding than muffins. Still, it hurts a bit I guess. I constantly struggle with this exhausting inferiority complex – fighting off feelings of ugliness, mediocrity, and the like. I wish I could just conquer my brain — wasting thought on these kinds of things is wholly worthless and moreover, simply promotes a vicious cycle.

The other day I figured out how to buy stuff off Amazon MP3 even though I am not in America. I shall NEVER touch iTunes again. The m4p thing has left me entirely cynical and bitter!!

Ok, you got me, I’m not in bed yet.

I just had a very strange attack of missing Boston. Or something. It hit me in the heart like a well-aimed front kick. Suddenly and breathlessly, I miss the cold, clear air of a sunny November Saturday; the bright crispness of the fallen leaves in Mt Auburn Cemetery; walking over the Harvard Bridge, wincing against the bitter wind, freezing hands dug deep into woolen pockets, chill moist scarf covering my mouth; the dirty uneven yellowish-grey of those Cambridge sidewalks; racing down the Infinite Corridor and running down the wide stone steps at the front of MIT, walking along the river Cambridge-side at 2AM, staring across at the lights of the city, or through Brookline at twilight while little snowflakes twinkle lazily down in the lamplight, or down to the Charles in the middle of the day to watch the sailboats in their formations.

… and suddenly, crazily, some small and incoherant part of me desperately, achingly, wants to go home… 

Have these past 3 years been just a dream? Sometimes I feel like I don’t actually exist anymore…

Am I running away, perhaps, not from a place, but a time? Or more, running back to a time and a place that I loved, and hated, and deliberately lost?

When is someone going to put a really good thesaurus online? I love Roget’s International Thesaurus: in years past,  have spent many an hour of peaceful twilight or deep night tapping quietly away at my computer, my trusty Roget at my side.

Yet every single online thesaurus I have yet encountered is crap.

Yesterday had our first gig of the year in a park by the sea. It did not go well. Our usual conductor was away, so my ex-orchestra conductor stood in, and while he is a good conductor, he did not know our repertoire, and worse yet, we didn’t even know it, as it had been handed out only 4 days previously. The lead alto sax was MIA and a flute player was standing in for him which was not good as some of the music was alto-heavy. It was almost a disaster. Bad acoustics of course being outdoors, missing lead alto, sight-reading of music, unfamiliar conductor lead to dreadful performance. And I am frankly angry about it. We are better players that such performances indicate. I feel like the gig was very poorly planned, repertoire was selected without thought for situation, and gig was considered just a ‘throwaway’ gig simply because it was a park gig, not much attended.

And that makes me angry. Big gig, small gig, we should treat them all seriously and play our best. I feel that the poor planning/repertoire selection just promotes the band members being sloppy & not caring as it seems then that the band leader does not care. The band leader must be the motivating point of a band’s unity and enthusiasm, which in turn is reflect by/amongst the players, who then work hard and listen and try to do their best. Right now we have an incoherent band and having these kind of performances put forward only promotes a vicious cycle of not caring-not-practicing-sloppiness-no attendence-not caring. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

I have written a letter to our committee about it in which I tried to state my feelings on this in a non-offensive, yet straightforward manner. Tried to be constructive about it. No idea if I succeeded: it is hard for me to be verbally gentle sometimes and moreover our band is quite rabid with politics and chips on shoulders. Ah, well.