Saturday, April 18, 2009

quiet Saturday afternoon + birdsong

So everybody in Berlin's in a good mood because the sun has been out for a couple of weeks now. Felix is in the living room playing poker with six kids total including himself, three of whom (three sisters) don't possibly know how so the rest of them (Felix and the twin boys who live across the way and are about a year younger than him) are teaching them.

Hubby is grocery shopping and Max is where? I don't know - earlier he was babysitting his not-quite-two-year-old niece. Everyone accounted for. I need to blog to my writing group, look at a novel I'm reviewing for someone else, possibly (belatedly) pay my 1st quarter estimated taxes . . . 

The people here at the institute are talking amongst themselves about how many people don't actually want to leave when the year is up, end of July. One of the older fellows, a history professor, is considering taking early retirement from her job in the States and just getting an apartment and staying in Berlin. (She's joined several chamber music groups and is liking it a lot.) Others are just scheming to at least stay on for a couple of weeks or a month . . . 

We've booked our plane tickets back, on August 2nd, so that's not happening with us. Though I do keep stopping to think - maybe somehow we could still stay a while? So Felix's German will truly consolidate? So I can enjoy this phase of my being here more, the phase in which I know people, do things, have connections, enjoy myself . . . ?

But nooooo. It isn't to be. 

Yesterday morning at my Friday morning writing group we wrote villanelles. Last week at play-reading group we wrote Endgame by Samuel Beckett (one act; four characters; there were only three of us so it was perfect). Hoping for a larger group next week - Shelly Kraicer, formerly known as Sheldon, is coming to visit on his way from Hong Kong to Udine (Italy?) - we haven't seen him in, he thought maybe, 24 years, which sounds about right. So he may come along to play-reading next Wednesday night.

And this afternoon, besides reading the poems for Monday night's poetry group (Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress and John Dunne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning), I'm sort of looking at a calendar I've made of our remaining 3 1/2 months here and trying to figure out how everything works. My Friday morning writing group wants to do a one-day retreat; I may do a couple of 10K races and we're signed up for a 5 x 5K relay with the rest of the institute June 12th; there's a choir weekend workshop mid-May but it conflicts with a 10K run - and I'd really like to do a guitar workshop too!

Did I mention I have mega-editorial deadlines and we have three or four family birthdays coming up and our older son is leaving soon for Bangalore . . . (and weight watchers is starting to be harder for me again)?

No, not stressed. Just lots going on and trying to keep it under control. It is a wonderful thing, trying to keep things under control.

2 comments:

Amani D said...

What a coincidence... I wrote a villanelle for English class last night, and we just finished reading and then watching Endgame in English as well!
~Amani

NaPoMarie said...

Dear Amani D, my dear, it is a coincidence indeed and thanks for the news from your end - tell me more about the watching of Endgame? Was it a movie? Or did you see a live production? And I would LOVE to see your villanelle if you felt like sending it?!

Love,
me