One more dream that came true

In the last post I mentioned a list of dreams and aspirations. The night before last, I just achieved one more goal off that list. Ever since when I was a little girl, my mother went to a Sing-Along concert of Handel's Messiah. She played the music for me over and over again. I fell in love with the piece at a tender age and informed my mother that some day I was going to go to a Sing-Along concert of Handel's Messiah as she had done. The night before last, I did. It was at the Kennedy Center, we were an audience of about five hundred people. I sang it more enthusiastically than I had ever sung that piece before. I have a rather big, strong sopranic voice. And I love beind in places where the structure of the building carries my sound. It was a positively soaring exhilaration, to be able, at the proper places in the piece, to sing as LOUDLY AS I COULD! I have been blessed with many occassions in my life to sing my heart out. It was such a supremely sweet gift from Jesus to let me sing for Him on His birthday yet again. And he knew that I had always wanted to sing that piece for Him in a concert.

The conductor said that in all the years he had conducted these Sing-Alongs, he had never heard it sung so well by the audience. I believe him. It was wonderful. Thank you, Jesus!

On My List

The night before last, I achieved one more of my life goals. I have a long list of dreams, aspirations and goals to go through on this earth. Here is just a sample of that list.

1. Become a saint.
2. Save the lives of at least one hundred people.
3. Tour Europe.
4. Visit Italy.
5. Vacation in a Beach House by the sea.
6. Drive a motor boat.
7. Learn to speak Spanish.
8. Learn how to sew.
9. Start my own business designing and sewing and selling beautiful modest dresses that make women who wear them feel like princesses.
10. Write, finish and publish great novels.
11. Get a driver's license.
12. Get a car.
13. Get a Liberal Arts education and degree from a great Catholic College.
14. Ride on incredibly daring roller coasters.
15. Become a teacher or tutor.
16. Do some missionary work.
17. Swim in a fountain.
18. Befriend every person I see who needs a friend.
19. Get married.
20. Have about a dozen children.


The list goes on and on and on. Every Christmas I take my heart with all of its dreams to Jesus, because every year Jesus asks me for that same gift, my heart.
I give it to Him every year, such as it is, and every year he makes some more of my dreams come true.

I have swam in fountains, ridden roller coasters, befriended every person I could, driven a motor boat, vacationed in a beach house by the sea, gotten my drivers license, achieved my education and college degree, and I have become a tutor. There are many other things on this long list that are still works in progress. I have started at least three novels that I think will be great when they are finished and published. I still am trying every day to become a saint. I have only saved the lives of a handful of people.
Other things on the list, like learning to sew, speak Spanish, get a car, and get married, I might have to wait until at least another year for. Merry Christmas All! May your dreams come true!

On Colors

When I was little, my favorite color was pink. For my fourth birthday, my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday.
I answered, "Pink!"
"Pink? Pink WHAT?" my mother asked.
"Pink, PLEASE!" I answered more carefully.
Trying to get me to understand the metaphysical impossibility of my request, she tried to get my toddler mind to focus on the subject, not the accident.

"Do you want a cake, Maria?"
"Yes, please! Pink Cake!"
"But what would you like for a present, sweetie?"
"PINK!"
"A pink WHAT?"
"Pink present!"
"Pink present?"
"Pink present please," enunciated as clearly as I could.
"I can't just give you "pink", baby. I can give you SOMETHING that is pink."
"Yes, something that is pink."
"But what?"
(I paused and responded carefully) "Something that is pink."

My mother ended up giving me the greatest birthday bash a four year old pinkophile could dream of. She dressed me in a frilly pink dress with a crown made out of rose construction paper. The cake's frosting was pink and the strawberry ice cream was pink. The present was wrapped in pink foil wrapping and pink ribbons and the rosy little baby doll inside wore a pink dress.

It is amazing an peculiar and wonderful how colors can move a person. It is no accident that we tend to describe symbolic meaning to colors. Part of it seems intuitive, even though interpretations are frequently different.

As an adult, my favorite colors in order are blue, white and red.

When I see the color red, it immediately evoke images of fire and blood. Perhaps that is why we associate the color with courage and daring. Because of its vivid richness and eye-catching quality it is also predictable that such a color is associated with passion and romance.

White evokes images of the immacualte. Perfection, cleaness, innocence, purity, honesty, goodness, and honor, are the most common symbols associated with it. That is why in the West, the bridal gown is tradiationally white, to symbolize the innocence of the bride and the purity of her love for the groom.

Why is blue my favorite? I could try to give you reasons. It is calming, soothing and yet exhilarating at the same time. Perhaps that is why the sky is blue. It calms and excites us mysteriously in the same instant. It cools like water and stirs like wind. It is a color in which I can easily percieve the commonly applied symbol of loyalty, truth and wisdom.

The real reason of course, is more emotional and more mysterious. Why do some of us prefer one color over the other? Why is it that some colors seem more beautiful to some and less so to others? That is a mystery no man shall ever discover in this life. It has its origin in the same source that made every human eye and every fingerprint unique. The colors He created for the eyes that He created stir the hearts He has created back toward him by reflecting faint glimmers of His eternal beauty.

On men who look real

I have always appreciated men. I appreciate their minds, strenghts, talents and ideals, when good. I have always been a visual person as well... passionate and intensely visual. This being said, it might come as something of a surprise to my paucity of readers that my romantic ideal, that made me swoon as a twelve-year old, was the Beast from the French fairy tale. I loved his humility and generosity and even his furry hugeness and stumblings of speed had an irresistable charm to me. When I was fifteen, my romantic ideal was Edmond Rostand's creation; Cyrano De Bergerac. I LOVED his chivarly, his rapier-sharp wit, his valor, his humor, his skill, his poetry, his honesty and his white plumb of freedom. Yes, I also loved his nose. My adoration of the character was so complete that when an unaware passerby, ignorant of the text, peered over my shoulder and said, "Who's the guy with the big, ugly nose?" I gasped and cried, "HIS NOSE IS BEAUTIFUL!" Indeed, most of my most beloved characters from books as well as the majority of my real life male friends are not what this current age would consider "classically handsome". It is a good thing that they are not, too! For the elder I grow, the more I am convinced, that what the fashion world presents for us as handsome, is something that very few men can or should achieve. I love men. I think they are marvelous to look at. They are fearfully and wonderfully crafter by God. But particularly when I visit my friends in California, I am accosted left and right from remarks by people appraising this man as "hot" and this man as "not" for the most silly reasons imaginable, mostly by women and sometimes even by the men themselves. When I point out a man as attractive, it is frequently rebutted by somebody who has grown too sophisticated to percieve anything as beautiful anymore. Not even the human eye, which is more wondrous than the ocean, or the human hand, so expressive and so marvellously designed. So I ask the person, "Well, what does a man have to look like in order to be deemed attractive?" There are many possible responses but I will name a few of the replies. "I wish I couls marry a man who looks like Brad Pitt." "Orlando Bloom" "Robert Pattinson" "Taylor Lautner" "Johnny Depp" "George Clooney" "Robert Downey Jr." "Joe Jonas". It makes me sad to encounter attitudes like that because I love men who look real. I do not want to marry a man who looks like any of those people (because what the blazes would a person like that have to do with me? What would somebody that toned, starved, painted, airbrushed, body-doubled, digitally edited and universally admired see in a beauty as humble and genuine as mine? Besides, he would cheat!) They don't look real because they are not. I like men who look real. Real men wear glasses. Real men are not often toned and built up. Real men often wear ugly and ill-matched clothes. Real men have receding hairlines. Real men are more "rotund". Real men are "scrawny". real men are short. Real men have dry patches of skin, blemishes, unshaved faces, scars, broken noses, uneven features, graying hair, or thin hair, wrinkles around their foreheads. Real men do not wear designer clothing. Real men do not drive a ferrari. Real men do not have the incomes to afford your prada bags, gucci shoes and plastic surgeries. Real men are Beautiful. They are all beautiful. Their hands are strong and manly from their work and generous deeds. Their eyes glisten with a vision to see what is just and desire it. Their mouths are beautiful from speaking the truth. Their ears are glorious because they listen and hear.

On Instant Messages

Instant messages save trouble and can be very helpful. I IM my friends when I must ask them a quick question. They usally catch me online though. I do not usually want to mark myself in any chat box forum as unavailable because I think "What if...?"
What if there is an emergency, what if their is good news, etc. Or sometimes I just don't think. I do sometimes neglect to think.

But I wish I would, because they way that random acquaintences in a given social network will seek out a random person to chat is kryptonite to me. I am predominantly melancholic/choleric in temperament. I am more introverted than extroverted. I do not often talk simply for the sake of talking. I speak when I have something to say. Also being a melancholic, being unable to communicate what I am trying to say is frustrating. As everybody knows, it is so easy to misunderstand somebody via texting or IMing. However, the nice thing is that if the conversation starts to go awry, you can say, "g2g bye" or if you are more fastidious " This has been lovely, and thank you so much for the chat. Oh dear, my duties beckon! Be well!"

On Singing Faure's "Requiem" on the Feast of All Souls

Previously I had never sang a requiem Mass in the context for which it was actually written. In a concert, yes, but not during the actual Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Last night, on the Feast of All Souls, I did.

The joy was only heightened by the fact that the Requiem Mass I was to be preforming, with my parish choir and the hired chamber orchestra, was Gabriel Faure's "Petit Requiem Messe".

I shall never forget the thrills of the dramatic Introit; the graceful Kyrie, the sublime Sanctus, and the hopeful In Paradisum.

Someday, I want to sing the Pie Jesu, and I have wanted to ever since I first heard it, some years ago.

Merci, Gabriel Faure. Requiescat in pace.

Schubert

I just finished singing Schubert's Mass no. 2 in G. Splendid! I did not sing alone of course. I am only a soprano. It was so wonderful to sing this Mass as Schubert actually intended it to be sung: As a Mass, not a concert antique!

Oh the raptures of the violins! Oh the cellos and basses! Oh the swift, steady trod of the organ. It was a storm, a fireworks display of color and light and wonder!

This Mass had such a gaiety that was not frivolous. Its mirth is stately. Sometimes you feel as though you are shouting so loudly that a baritone thunder crash and a sopranic pierce of lightening are going to open up the earth beneath you! Other times it is so boistrous you can barely sing without laughter. Other times it is so exquisitely melancholy that you could swear that an angel somewhere in heaven was weeping as Schubert wrote those tender notes.

Thank you, sweet God! You give us music to tell us that you love us, and then you teach us to sing that we love You!

Veils

It is a pity that long lace mantillas are not recognized by the current fashion world. They are very aesthetically appealing.

The stupidities incessant cable tv watching

It is unfathomable to me how many people waste so much time of the valuable, unique adventurous sojourns of their life upon this earth in watching a second or third rate re-dramatisation of life in the form of series dramas or tv shows or soap operas.

This is the only life I have on this earth, my business life is too haphazard and whimsical to want to escape through the artificially preserved tension of a crime-fighting or discovery drama or a what-if-fantasy. My love life is tempestuous and tantalizing enough without trailing after ficticious relationships with air-brushed, painted, died, and self-consciously sensuous men who have unrealisitic and sometimes mindless tensions with unrealistically salon-groomed, manicured, push-up bra clad, gun clutching actresses. My man, my family and friends are dramatic enough and I am a human whirlwind of drama. Do not misunderstand me. I love movies, when well acted out, well executed, well-written, and weighty in consequence. But the series dramas of today have nothing on my life, my real life, as it is.

For that matter, the cheap romance novels have got nothing on my life. Moreover, those darn video games that men seem so entranced with have got nothing on my life, with all of its humor, joy, sorrow, bitterness, sweetness, swiftness, steadiness, unpredictability, adventure and peace. Yes, peace, even in the midst of all this uncertainty. To those of you who spend hours on end doing these things, I can only express my sympathy, because your lives must be dull right now. Either that or you have been blinded to the adventure and beauty and wonder that is right in front of your eyes.

Beautiful views of the sea

The ocean has always been one of the most powerful images of the infinite mercy, power, beauty and majesty of God. Though used as a subject in art constantly through the ages, finding something in art that will capture the wonder of each glistening green and blue, each curlings wave, each foamy pleasure; is as unlikely as being able to scale a star, liquidate a mountain or unravel the mysteries in the human eye.

On the unromantic, prosaic habit of wearing casual clothing constantly

There will always be a time and place for a lady to dress casually.
What irks me is the fact that women in this country wear faded jeans and shapeless T-shirts so often, that the men in their life, and even they themselves, have forgotten that
we were all born to be princesses and princes.

Dressing in a manner that takes more time and effort, but is more visually pleasing, conveys to the viewers that they are worth taking time to please. Also, it indicates a sense of one's own dignity. And that digity, and the poetry and romance of the human person, is a truth that must never be forgotten.

Musings on Love

It is a splendid but mysterious truth that all men secretly want to rescue the love of their lives. All men are born wild things, and yet they cannot truly be happy unless in their very freedom, they bind themselves; that in their very wildness they temper themselves.

The usual impetus for the revelation of this strange truth, comes in the form of a woman. Though like the man, she way relish an adventure and victorious battle, they wage wars in more concentrated spheres, and prefer to battle in groups. They are not naturally solitary and unsettled. They are quite adept at finding a cosy spot to take root and bloom, and if they a plunged in inamicable situations, they naturally want to do this or that or add this or that to make the environment more inviting and appealing.

Every woman needs to make a home, but making one merely for herself is not enough. She has to make it for someone else. And it must not be a merely external home. The woman wants herself to be the home. She does not merely want to be a bearer of gifts, she is to be the gift herself. She does not merely decorate and adorn herself and all around her, she is the beauty, the gem in the cleft of the rock, the guiding light in the shadows. She wants to give her labors, her smiles, her tears, the work of her hands and the light of her eyes to her husband and her children. (For secretly all women want to bring forth new life and nourish and shelter little ones.)

She needs the man to do all of these things. Hence, in receiving her, he gives her her the gift she most desires.

Likewise, the man, once he has fought enough battles, vanquished his enemies, he must do something even more daunting. He must conquer himself. Only once this feat is achieved, can he be ready to sweetly imprison the heart of his beloved. Hence, while the woman captivates the wild and independent man, she sets him free; and while the man gives himself to the woman, he is reaping the joys of this joint victory.