Monday, December 19, 2005

Luciano Pavarotti


What is it about Mr Pavarotti that can occasionally restore a lost soul ... he did what Counting Crow, James Blunt and Garou couldn't do tonight.

My soul came home all small and shrivelled up after the Nederlands examination today. My goodness (by way of understatement) it was 2 hours of angst and anxiety. I shouldn't even write of it here, as I may want it forgotten when the results are handed out.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'm performing again ... Round Two: 10 to 15 minutes of examined conversation in Nederlands.

WHAT WAS I THINKING????

If I'm looking for an up side to all this, I imagine that freedom is so much sweeter after a time of enforced suffering. I remember reading that suffering is measured by a person's own reality. We were asked to consider the fact that a teenager, whose parents won't let her get her nose improved in a wealthy country, experiences her suffering at a level similar to a person being tortured in a country where imprisonment and torture is an everyday reality.

Am I exaggerating ... maybe, just a little, but I didn't enjoy today's test. And Pavarotti's Live Recital cd, with Leone Magiera on the piano, is just lovely ... if you were looking for a nice one. My musical taste is hmmm, eclectic, and occasionally odd (thanks to knowing Diede, among others).

Moving on though, I've had mail lately, and that's a little bit of sunshine for this expat. Real mail, in my letterbox ... !!

Last week, my scarves arrived from Istanbul ... slowly but surely, my belongings and I are being reunited. I guess from the outside looking in, my life might sometimes look a little disorganised, but wandering out here seems to require an enormous amount of flexibility sometimes.

'Inshallah' or 'God willing' is the perfect word somedays ... when all seems lost, including my mail.

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