An Alabaster Brow

I have been tagged by the wonderful, dear Siren. Here are 20 random facts about me:

1. By the time I finished high school, I had gone to 8 different schools. My family moved around a lot due to my brother’s health–started out in Brooklyn, trotted out to Detroit, and then settled in Los Angeles.

2. I will move to New York. I feel superlatively in my element there.

3. I will never live in a small town. The smallness of them really get on my nerves.

4. I do not get along well with people who are not open-minded. After everything history has told us about truth and certainty, I just do not understand how people can be anything but open in their thinking.

5. There are 7 medical doctors and 6 artists/musicians in my family. Thus, I will be the only non-medical doctor and lawyer in the family.

6. Since age 7, I played classical piano and had plans to become a concert pianist. I used to sleep with Chopin sheet music under my pillow.

7. … and yet, the instrument that moves me like no other is the cello. Yo-Yo Ma has said that it is the closest sound to the human voice. I also think it is incredibly beautiful to watch a cellist play, particularly a female cellist.

8. Often, if you check my handbag, you will find a copy of The Communist Manifesto. You should see the looks on people’s faces when I whip it out in trains.

9. I have a heart-shaped face complete with a widow’s peak that I pluck at.

10. I went to the Violator signing/stampede at the Beverly Connection and Martin Gore kissed me on the cheek.

11. I was a diligent member of a youth choir for 5 years. I sang 4 years as a soprano and my last year as a mezzo-soprano. Right now I sing comfortably in the mezzo-soprano range.

12. I hate driving (and yet, I live in LA… well, see #2)

13. I have never had a tuna fish sandwich. I practically have to leave the room when someone else is eating one. I do not get how people can eat tuna out of a can period.

14. The only times I drink soda are when I am having whisky or rum (although I love them neat, too).

15. I love persimmons, but prefer them hard with some crunch and slip as opposed to soft requiring a sloppy slurp.

16. I always wear sunscreen; I never wear foundation.

17. I went to a highly gifted junior high where everyone had an IQ of at least 150. They were the most unique and scary smart group of people I have ever encountered. Most went on to become remarkably accomplished and the rest went a bit nuts.

18. I am ridiculously picky about writing instruments.

19. I call myself a second impression maker. I do not make the best first impression and worry that I will not get a second shot.

20. Life without the arts is unimaginable to me.

I hereby tag the remarkable L. at Make a Mental Note.

Autumn is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in the barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

-”The Falling of the Leaves” by William B. Yeats

Although the calendar marks September 22 as the first day of autumn, like clockwork, every year the weather cools at the outset of October, inviting that delicious crisp nip in the air, which serves as both a scent and a tactile feeling, a signal that the world is undergoing a new phase.

I love the transition of summer to fall. Leaves begin to stray and nature’s backdrop transforms into a kaleidoscopic mélange of pumpkin oranges, forest greens, cornfield yellows, and earthy browns. Breezes waft about and sunlight gains a superlative power at sunrise and sunset, illuminating the world in hyperkinetic color. Cooler days are washed by the beauty of serene melancholy, quiet but never sullen, like a single browning leaf falling from a branch.

Painting: Claude Monet. Weeping Willow. 1919. Oil on canvas. Musée Marmottan, Paris, France. From Olga’s Gallery at abcgallery.com