Essential Home --- Day 4/312

Walk: No
Distance: 0, Home Yoga (2)

Johannes Vermeer, The Little Street, ca 1657-1661, 21 3/8" x 17 3/8" oil on canvas

Oh Goodie!!  A Vermeer painting Ciwt didn't know existed until today! And being (always) a homebody and (now) a city person, she was instantly taken by this naturalistic townscape.  It is a slice of daily, domestic 17th century life in Delft so exquisitely rendered that it captures the poetic beauty of and reverence for everyday life throughout Holland. In its tidy, clean, unadorned simplicity, The Little Street is essentially a portrait of Holland.

Detail

In Vermeer's time, the virtuous Dutch home had risen to the level of sanctuary, the seat of the individual soul where all domestic and good citizenship values were modeled and passed on.  Unlike European countries at the time, women's work was highly valued and so was the play of children. Sewing, like spinning was considered an attribute of Biblical origins, and cleanliness, washing and sweeping were associated with spiritual cleanliness and purity.  So too the purity of children who were dressed plainly in frugal, hand-me-down clothes.  All these values and thoughts - and so much more - are rendered easily, naturally and, to Ciwt, with such great love that Vermeer has quietly made his viewer an active participant in The Little Street's silent townscape narrative. 

Nice to connect with The Little Street at this particularly 'at home' time of colder weather and short days.

This spring, after 320 years, The Little Street will be reunited with the place where it was created. It will be in Museum Prinsenhof Delft from March 25 to July 17, 2016 in case you are planning a trip or live abroad.  Otherwise it will be at its museum home, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Different Notes --- Day 4/311

Walk: Marin Driving Day
Distance: Not much, small home yoga



Ciwt had an interesting encounter with music the other day at Fort Mason Center here in San Francisco.  She and a friend went to The Forty Part Motet, a sound installation by artist Janet Cardiff.  Entering the space they found it naked except for forty speakers placed in a large oval and standing at ear level.  When the music, Spem in Alium,* by Thomas Tallis, began each speaker played just one individual voice recorded from the Salisbury Cathedral Choir and listeners could place themselves in the center of the choir and let the waves of sound wash over them.  Or they could move closer to the speaskers and hear single choral voice. The path to listening was chosen individually and the experience was entirely personal.

More personal than Ciwt at first imagined!  She had been immersed in the, for her, moving sounds - at times finding tears spontaneously arising.  She thought the experience emotionally touching and beautiful. But when she met up with her friend at the end of the performance loop, she learned her friend was captivated by the music but not particularly (or at all?) moved.  Her friend has extensive experience recording sound tracks, so what she found herself doing was visualizing the length of the sounds and space between them as they would look on a recording track.

Or something like that.  The point being that Ciwt and her friend had had two absolutely different relationships with Cardiff's installation.  And, Ciwt began to realize, this was probably true of every individual in the room with her and all those around the world who have experienced the installation as it has toured internationally.

What about you?  The link above brings you to a short video and listener comments on the Motet's installation at the Venice Architectural Biennale 2010.  Ciwt wonders how you will relate to it.**


*Spem in Alium, a Forty Part Motet by Elizabethan Thomas Tallis (c. 1505 - 1585) was composed to celebrate the 40th birthday of Queen Elizabeth I and first performed at Nonsuch Palace ca. 1750.

**Online are several complete versions, such this one, of 'Spem in Alium'

Cyber 'Deal' Coda* --- Day 4/310

Walk: Fort Mason, Fillmore Street
Distance: 3 miles


Out With the Compost
In with more opportunities.... 

*See CIWT Day 4/309

Year End Decisions -- Day 4/309

Walk: JCC, T. Joe's
Distance: 2.5 miles and very small yoga




As the days get shorter and shorter Ciwt can't decide between comfort food and going to sleep.

Glove OR --- Day 4/308

Walk: Small Errand
Distance: 6 Blocks, small yoga


                       Pre Op

Ciwt was very! pleased with some snappy gloves she snagged on Cyber Monday.  $39 marked down from something like $250.  And when they arrived they were gorgeous - and just right for her upcoming winter trip to NYC.  So she unwrapped them, cut off the tags and tossed the sales receipt just in time for the recycling pick up.  Done.   Then she smelled them.  Wrong order of activities.

Mildew**%%##.  The worst.  But the gloves are so nice.  So she went online to find general agreement that removing mildew smell is near impossible but a teeny smattering of 'how to' experts mentioning a small possibility that entails cotton balls and cheap vodka.

So Ciwt is giving it a try before tossing the 'good deal' gloves.  The operation is over, now comes the couple of days of airing out.  We'll see.....
                                                     Post Op

PS -- Isn't Ciwt and CIWT interesting during the holiday season?

Ups, Downs and Different Perspectives --- Day 4/307

Walk: Chestnut Street Gap (2x)
Distance: 4.8  miles, small yoga

Today Ciwt discovered the downside of repeatedly leaving her home and then going back (and back) because she had forgotten something.  Worse is not remembering and not going back (and back)! Unfortunately she learned this after she had walked through the wind, rain and cold of a storm (yay!) and was waaaay doooown the hill from home making a Gap return. It wasn't until she was standing at the cash register that she realized the main item was not in the bag. So it was Waaaay UP the hill and stairs to her home and Waaay back down again to the Gap and then Waaaay UP the hill through the cold, windy storm to home.  (There is a reason her area of San Francisco is called Pacific Heights).

From now on Ciwt will try to remember to feel lucky - instead of frustrated - for all those attempts to leave home with everything at hand.  You too?

Who It's For --- Day 4/306

Walk: Fort Mason
Distance: 5 miles and small yoga



Usually once in the Christmas season Ciwt attends some child oriented event.  For the arts performance, yes, but mostly for the colors, costumes and off the wall energy.  This year's ballet was totally satisfactory for a number of reasons.  First it was walkable to the remarkable Fort Mason, a beautiful site by the bay (about which probably a future CIWT).  Second, it was 50 minutes, ie, short.  Third, parents were told by the performers not to sweat disruptions or shhhh their children, so the house was wild with kid energy.  
They were standing up to see (makes sense), talking to their parents at full voice about the performance - or having to go pee pee, crinkling paper. Things that would normally drive Ciwt around the bend, but silly and uplifting when that's kind of what she's there for.  

Most amazing to Ciwt, however, was how rapt most of the children were in the dancing and all the action on the stage.  Ciwt's family wasn't a take your kids to The Nutcracker at Christmas type, but, had they been, Ciwt's image of her young self is of a squirmy and b-o-r-e-d little girl.  Maybe not judging from these kids.

You'll be relieved to hear she  didn't sit on the Nutcracker's lap and have her picture taken after the performance today. But she did get a visual present on the walk home when she spotted some usually dreaded succulents* and found them quite fetching when planted with others of their kind as well as non-succulents.  

* See Succulentophobia --  Day 4/148

How You Going to Keep Them Down on The.... Day 4/305

Walk: Presidio
Distance: 6 blocks (wimpy), small home yoga (wimpy)


Sunday was the last performance of San Francisco Opera's Die Meistersinger*, and the sets from England had to get back there ASAP.  To accommodate that tight schedule, they opened the curtain between the 2nd and 3rd acts and made the audience privy to backstage happenings.  We watched as the sets were deconstructed and listened with interest to information about some of the myriad details that go into putting on an Opera and to a Q & A with audience questions as well as an interview with the Opera Director himself, David Gockley .

Quite special; the audience including Ciwt was riveted, postponing or rushing back from necessary bathroom breaks to hear tidbits. An excellent decision on the SF Opera's part: many of the sets were on their way to England before Die Meistersinger ended.  But, Ciwt can't help but wonder if Opera had other hopes for the entertaining intermission: Specifically keeping the audience in the house and energized for the 3rd Act (in the 5 and one half hour opera) which is longer than the first two acts combined.  If so, Bravo!

*See Day 4/301