The Rite of Winter

The minister in church this morning told a story about Stravinsky. He wrote a fiendlishly complex violin solo, and the soloist approached him to say that, well, he had practiced but it was impossible to play it well. Stravinsky chuckled and said that he was after the sound of the soloist trying to play it well.

Life is full of incongruities, isn't it? Like tonight, I was hellbent on making spaghetti squash, which peels apart like little strands of angel hair when cooked right. (And did I cook it right? Oh yes.) But I didn't know how to get in: the sharpest knife we had couldn't slice through the squash. So Kate suggests, facetiously, that I get out my saw. Five minutes later: Kate is taking a picture, which will probably be on Facebook soon, of me sawing into the vegetable. (Warning: Don't try this at home.) That saw saw me through; the "spaghetti" was magnifico.

Incongruities. I'm plowing through Angela's Ashes - you know, I needed some light reading - but it oddly becomes more lighthearted as it goes on. This kid defines a word in school, and the teacher responds: "Pithy, Clarke, but adequate. McCourt, give us a sentence with pithy." "Clarke is pithy but adequate, sir." (That brings me back to archaeology in college; Connie and David remember how all of our answers were to be pithy.)

And it's everywhere. Last night, in the men's bathroom at orchestra practice, I see this sign: "Please do not place sanitary napkins in the toilet." Are they that worried?

I'm riding home on the T last week, and this pair behind me talks without no restraint or sense of being in public about their liaisons among a circle of friends, who presumably were all sleeping with each other. I got off before they could loudly share how they'd inevitably contracted hemophilia. Again, maybe it seems incongruous, but I enjoy it when the train is virtually silent, and I can sit (what a virtue that is on the B line) and read, and be lost in my own bubble contemplating things.

Yesterday I was just finishing up reading The History Boys, a play, on the way home and there was this wonderful hush, only to be spoiled five pages from the end by someone behind me loudly talking on her cell phone. I'm not saying she shouldn't be talking on her cell, but when you think about it, public transportation isn't always so public. It's not really a social venue; it doesn't invite much carousing; people make perfunctory acknowledgments but mostly keep to themselves. Which is fine with me. It seems jarring when people strike up a conversation in what was a few seconds earlier a silent train. Are they networking? Are they looking to score? Where's the code of conduct for the T? (Besides the obvious: Don't block the door. Don't steal seats from old women. Don't tell me you might throw up on me.)

Then again, maybe life is full of incongruities because it should be.