Cures, and "next" is a weird word

At my piano teacher's 80th birthday party two weeks ago, there wasn't too much conversation; I marveled once at the syncopated slaps of noodle-slurping against silence. We then engaged in the master's postprandial party activity of choice: listening to a recording of Schubert's string quintet. No phones were checked for four movements (save one stealthy student's, under the piano). My teacher's expressions incited imaginings of what eighty years must have brought into those forty-five minutes. Considered the reverse case as well. 

Anyway—I now listen to this piece during ~loner lunch~ (good acoustics in the classroom). It keeps playing as my favorite section of students trickles in for a .ppt-heavy hour. 

A KDFC listener called in to cite a Beethoven violin sonata (unsure which) as a cure for depression. Not physiological phooey: Beethoven's powers of mood-mending and mind-molding cured me just last night (it was amazing! I fell asleep pleasantly emptied of the will to wake, which is fine because it returned with the arpeggio alarm of yore). 22:38-22:58 above are worth your half-minute, and then in context, of course.

I hadn't heard these late sonatas until I met the one whose ghost still inspires the occasional 1 AM letter-to-God: "What was the point?!" At 1:30, I listen to these pieces and I am answered. A boon. So, thkunxt

best gift from Jurby!

gedoo-dolt

Turns out "doodled" in German is actually "gekritzelt."

Newest family member, Ali 💝

Documenting June 2016, ft. Auntie Rosa, Auntie Susan, and REAP in Seoul, Beijing, Sichuan, Hunan, Yunnan, Shaanxi, and Baoji ("precious chicken"). From left to right, top to bottom: Han River paddle-boating, requisite palace-tour garb, a visit to Podotree HQ in Korea's Silicon Valley and Chaeree's unknown-mammal pet, ube; guangchangwu outside Beijing's egg-shaped Grand Theater, tin teacups at a Chonqqing chicken stew shop, bookend, Sichuan Arts Institute hairdo, CPC theater, Auntie Susan commandeering a bus and explaining that you can pee anywhere behind an umbrella, countryside dog fam, playing music with a Christian Tujia family befriended on bus, Lijiang banana tree, Lijiang llama, Dali lake horizon; one night in a pod hotel, my fellow REAPers Stella and Laura, whizzing through rural Shaanxi, Xi'an blue taxi, morning exercises and iron-deficient aliments, bowls plastered with Angelababy stickers, cathartic karaoke, baijiu-drenched dinner with DoEd officials, and lastly (blast past onset of Hepatitis C to a) Xi'an bar window.

Lijiang llama!