Convalescence

I've recently recovered from a rather severe bout of Mahleria with the BPO. (The 3rd symphony, playing assistant.) Mahleria, of course, is a pretty severe ailment. Once you've contracted a strain it takes over your life quickly, and is known for being so protracted and lingering that sometimes there isn't even time for an intermission.





 

Most music students have an episode of it sometime or another. It's quite contagious, and mostly spread by tiny, annoying, high pitched insects with vindictive swarming personalities making a horrible whiny sound. I mean violins, of course.

 

So anyway, a week of Mahleria takes over your life. You feel listless, and then really excited, and then triumphant, and then despairing again, pretty much in random sequence every couple of minutes. I was going to take some medication, but when I got it out I found all the instructions were in German.

 

Okay, that's enough with the Mahler jokes. It was a great week with BPO, and the gig ended with my favorite words: "Hey, what are you doing next week?" Fortunately, this week being a program of absurdly difficult contemporary music, I don't really need to practice, and can devote a little bit of time to reading, writing, and playing with my bouncing baby boy.

James is very bouncy recently. He starts kicking his feet as soon as he wakes up in the morning, then kick-kick-kicks the wipes at the end of his changing table, and leans for the mirror on his dresser when he has a new diaper. Once he gets in front of the mirror he bounces with his reflection for a few minutes, and then goes downstairs. (Bouncing, preferably.) From there he bounds/trots from one end of the house to another with a set of hands under his armpits, from kitchen to living room to kitchen again, then up the stairs, down the stairs, and another circuit. Eventually he tires both parents out, and we put him in his bouncer, where he will happily kick himself up and down, up and down, until he needs a nap. I'm reminded, taking care of him, that the most wonderful thing about Jameses is he's the only one.

Currently reading C.S. Lewis' big 16th century literature book, which I may have to abandon. The first section I kept up with, with some help from the internet looking up names of poets and poems, but the second section is so full of Middle English that I'm missing most of what he's saying. I'm also still working through the Confessiones, Aeschylus' Prometheus, the Iliad, and the Zondervan Hebrew grammar. J and I listened to an N.T. Wright lecture last night on his new book, How God Became King...very good talk and much to talk about afterwards, but we were so tired by the end of it (see Mahleria and the bouncing baby boy) that we went straight to bed!