Been reading up on the upcoming trip, doing a little light reading to get ready.
“Here was not the customary procedure of a non-musical playwright putting together a libretto and then handing it over to a composer to be ‘set to music,’ the product of their joint labour being afterwards turned over to actors, producers, machinists, designers and all the rest of them to add their several contributions, but the operation of a complex faculty of which the world had no experience until then, the operatic creator being at once dramatist, musician, mime, producer, conductor and everything else. It was not even that Wagner, during the creation of an opera, was dramatist, and composer and stage practitioner in successive layers, as it were, the one faculty taking the up the job where others had laid it down.” (Newman, Ernest. The Wagner Operas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.)
The impact of opera as a form of popular culture has probably waxed and waned in the intervening years. A curious note, and I could only wish that I had better notes from my university study, but as I understand it, until Wagner’s Parsifal, the Holy Grail was the cup that caught Christ’s blood. But after that opera, the myth was changed so the grail was the cup used at the last supper. In any event, cursory research indicates the theories have holes.
Off topic:
Where Wasabi comes from? Bring on the burn.
Professional notes:
Reading Tea Leaves was a gift, probably a stocking stuffer from my own, wee Scorpio mum, feigning a Scottish accent at the time. For her son the oracle. I picked it up because I’ve been scrying in coffee grounds lately, just as an idle amusement, but perhaps as a valid oracle, too.
“It will be seen that to read a fortune in the tea-cup with any real approach to accuracy and a serious attempt to derive a genuine forecast from the cup the seer must not be in a hurry. He or she must not only study the general appearance of the horoscope displayed before him, and decide upon the resemblance of the groups of leaves to natural or artificial objects, each of which possesses a separate significance, but must also the balance the good and the bad, the lucky and unlucky symbols, and strike an average.”
Reading Tea Leaves. NY: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1995.
What I liked was a gentle reminder about the way the symbols, whether those symbols are cards, tea leaves, coffee grounds, or stars, how it all tied together.
Off topic:
There is definitely an EULA on this printed material. (From a slash dot article.)
Back top the professional points:
I was looking something up on the internet, I suppose that’s become a common research situation, and I stumbled across another astrologer. I didn’t dig through the collected works, but I found someone who seems to resonate well with what I do. Same kind of style.
Astro Barry, tell him Bubba sent ya there. I’ll even share some digital images from the other afternoon, like he does.
Satire:
At least , I hope this thing is satire.
Not satire (not irony, either):
I clicked through to a unique item – closest I’ll get to social networking – a place for independent coffee shop and similar locations.
I’m especially interested in what’s close to the Seattle Opera House.
Cherchez les poissons:
[style=floatpicleft>
[/style>I saw my girlfriend, the river was still pretty clear between intermittent morning thunder storms, but she saw me with a pole in hand, and bolted to deeper water. Then the rain and run off caught up and there went the fishing. Around dusk, I tried another spot, rather muddy, but at that very moment when the water was flowing, or draining, anyway. Picked up this little fellow. Looks rather familiar, though, like, haven’t I caught this one before? Same spot, same fish?
