My little joke yesterday, or whatever I should call it, went well. Jim, Leslie and the nieces were flying into Milwaukee from LAX after visiting Jim's sister, Juliet, who with me is Godmother to Grace. Since my work right now is either reading or reading-and-writing, I could easily do the "reading" option and take my work on the city bus with me, which I did, and headed down to the airport. And so there I was reading, sitting off to the side of the walkway out to their gate when they came walking along from where the plane landed. I feigned surprise to see the girls, wondering what they were doing here in my town, but I think no one caught that amazing thespian moment. Mostly I was relieved that Jim and Leslie seemed to take it as a pleasant surprise and not me being completely annoying. So I got to hear the girls talk about petting a penguin at SeaWorld, seeing Shamu do a nighttime show, seeing pelicans, holding starfish – oh, and Auntie Juliet, too. Leslie was the one who thought to mention their going on a whale-watching trip (apparently blue whales are in season now, which got me incredibly excited to hear, though they didn't see a thing) and described to me how the whole lot of the girls got seasick on the unusually rough waters, and the parental perspective of the pleasures of one's daughters taking up the sport of synchronized vomiting. Haley (no worse for her fall, I heard with relief from Leslie, even scrambling right back up on the monkey bars when she had the chance) and Grace gabbled to me about things they had seen while Jim and Leslie dealt with baggage recovery, and in a few quick minutes already had the shuttle to their hotel where they had left their car the week before. The car was packed out with kids and luggage, so they couldn't offer me a ride when they mentioned their intention to grab some food. I rather thought they were talking pretty much in terms of fast-food on the way out of town, and so I didn't even suggest their coming north to my downtown section of the city, even though getting downtown and back out isn't the long affair that it can be in Chicago. Had they had the time, I would have loved to do one of my deli-run/picnic dinners down by the Lake with all of them. Nor did I think to recommend one of the few remaining A&W restaurants to them, 10 or 15 miles south of the city on the interstate, which is my favourite fast food place to stop when heading in their direction.
I took the 80 bus back downtown and walked back from the Wisconsin Avenue stop instead of waiting around to catch a connection for the last mile and enjoyed the early evening sun, and just reading as I walked. I decided to head over to the Courtyard early and just picked up my reading there. It's been my habit for some years to spend my outdoor summer on Marquette's campus in the Courtyard of the Fountain in front of the Chapel of Joan of Arc. This year, though, when I've been in town, it's become my particular habit to spend the last hour of the light reading there, sometimes work, but often to take that time to break with a novel. Then I finished The Small Rain which I had read well ahead on when I was feeling under the weather the other day. The simplest difference in reading that this time, which I should have expected, was simply that since the last time I had picked it up, I had been to the place that much of it takes place in: Switzerland around Lake Geneva. The images were therefore more crisp than I usually get out of a book where I'm supplying the visuals to the author's descriptions entirely out of my collaborative imagination. Now, instead, I was flashing back to my train ride back from Italy around the north end of the great Lake, and of sitting next to it, sipping drinks with the fabulously fun Nicod sisters as Erik and I were getting to know them.
Somehow, yesterday evening was just kind of perfect in light, temperature, and relative quiet. I enjoyed myself immensely, missing only the roses around the fountain, which had been trimmed back a few weeks ago. I shared a smile with a young woman who also came a bit later to read in the Courtyard, and who had the look, I suspected, of a new graduate student, newly moved to campus and trying out the ambiance for herself: I've seen that style of drifting around looking and testing different sitting-spots before. I glanced occasionally at the Chapel, which was originally in the Rhone Valley as well, as I recall, or over at the Dove of the Holy Spirit relief high up on the Memorial Library wall, and the occasional gull flying overhead. I was very conscious of my lack of real knowledge and feel for classical music as I finished the book, scattered throughout with the names of pieces from various composers. The next time I read The Small Rain, I resolved to do what I did the last time I read Sheldon Vanauken's A Severe Mercy: to go on iTunes and make/buy a mix of pieces mentioned, so that I can enter more fully into the author's intention by resonating with the soundscape she invokes in citing the music. I don't really know what separates the great pianists from the proficient ones, I suspect. With classical music, I'm still at the most basic level of discernment of "I like what I like." That's not bad, of course: in a certain way, that's the most honest of all taste, and the one that most defies any pretension. Still, the world is full of ears that have been conditioned to the likes of Brittney Spears: I'd like to be more sensitive to the music that the real musicians know is good playing. Buying the setlists from The Small Rain and its sequel A Severed Wasp, however, will set me back a few pennies, as they're rather full, even discounting the fictional compositions of Katherine's father and those of her husband. And then there will be the long process of listening to multiple versions on iTunes, trying to decide with my limited knowledge and ear which are the ones worth investing in. But the reading game me cause to think about music in new ways, and of my efforts, or lack thereof, in really opening myself up to certain forms.
And for the first time, I think I finally truly understood the title of the novel, which, while good in itself, made me feel rather thick for not having worked it out much earlier. Of course, that feeling, too, might ultimately be good in itself, or at least good for me....