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.