March 22 - Holy Saturday!

Sleep is running rampant, robbing time.

Meanwhile Napa beckons yet yet again, as perfect short getaway.

Pressing a button on the cellphone, cut to Harriet making coffee, answering emails, the dark blue screen of one of the domicile's workhorses glowing brightly, sometimes beeping loudly, ringing the years.

"Is it not time for our ennui killer?"

We interrupt our scheduled Metropolitan Richard Wagner morphing (Tristan und I-Sold-Out), and if it was a violin, answer the telephone.

Upon hearing of schemes, push a button, bust a Shakespeare rhyme, open a door and a bookcase, reading about polar opposites. Slip-sliding, mountainous in the flick of a light, switching to the car. Animated.

In full costume, we set out, Mark in the driver's seat.

Harriet would be unlikely to say, "Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed."

But I could respond, "Roger, ready to move out" and we two race off out of the Platonian Cave of Appearances at high speed.

As the Toyotamobile approaches the mouth of the freeway, a hinged light drops down green to allow the car to enter on to I-80.



After passing The Wine Guy, the initial discussion leads us back to dynamic Dry Creek Road conducting Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress .



A meeting with local gentry in unbearable brightness,



being the getting away further on the Mayacamas meander, utimately back to Marin, only to come back and walk again later Sisyphusianly.



Here, we recapture heroically senza deathtrap or cliffhanger, vetting our discontent,



and all is resolved at the intersection of Orchard.



At least temporarily, in Napamatic splendor, in test estate.



A related pattern has cycled each day at length, although a portable cycle has circled in a pinch, which way are we going to Stag's Leap,



vineyard?



Yes, she said. Yes, she will read in the sun, angelically, patiently,



but first sleep, sleep; dream-drive north of Yountville.



Napa poppies,


leaping, soaring.


Operatic soirree chez Peter Kuperman in SF thereafter, with folks from San Francisco Contemporary Opera (a.k.a. SF Cabaret Opera), San Francisco Opera, Merola, Golden Gate Opera, Wagner Society of Northern California, and San Jose Ballet.



Much later, record Vocal Sonatina No. 1 ("Spitzer"): III. Only the Lobbyists (instrumental version, paradoxically)

March 15 - Ayes and Ears

Morning frolics, including the finishing of Op. 156 Vocal Sonatina No. 1 ("Spitzer"): III. "Only the Lobbyists," with text inspired by New York Lieutenant (and soon-to-be) Governor David Paterson --

Only the lobbyists
come here to see me.
I kind of feel like a student
who's getting ready for the final exam
but they didn't attend any classes.

-- troped on the third movement of Muzio Clementi's Sonatina No. 1, with distended 12-tone tonality in a 9/8 context featuring Stravinskian-Glassian modularity.



Late afternoon outing again to Napa, along Buhman Road between Congress Valley and the unfortunate developments to the north,


south to the top of the grade,


with its parallel oak limbs,


down to a spidery variant at the crossroads,


where the sun breaks through the clouds just in time to set,


splaying light back at the intersection,


across vinyards


and lone trees.


A view by a stump back to San Francisco Bay;


a dark vineyard, gallery forest,


nestled mechanics, and sunlit crest;


a cow horizon, framed by branches and machinery;


white


and red barns face the dimness, in consort with undulating ridges and an impressive number of vehicles;


oaks framed by a wagon beckon onward


to late evening light over the Vaca Mountains,


clouds flaming on the return via Highway 29,


seemingly taking over the sky,


with fingers of dark forests ahead.

March 14 - Life Is a Cabaret Opera

Harriet and I take a promotional shot for the 2008 Fresh Voices VIII Festival of New Works, to be given this November, which will include a revival of


Antigone.


Write the second movement of Vocal Sonatina No. 1 ("Spitzer"): II. Andante, with text

I am not a monster
I just don't want to be
This has been a very difficult time
It's very complicated
He walked out on me
Relax
I am about my music
And my music's me


Rendezvous with Harriet for coffee, then off to Napa again, past Jameson Canyon's greens and blues,


and fields flaming below a gratuitous rainbow.


Beyond is the Napa Wine Guy (The Cowboy Vintner), with and


without the traffic light,


heading toward the eucalyptus windbreak


against and under a heavy leaden sky.


The walk, completing Congress Valley Road, features pseudo church,


cat on a cold car roof, and


a lost blue(-tarped) boat.



Stacked palms


prove an entry way


across from general greenery


of a gallery forest


whose giant bonzai plantings


reveal road


and lonely oak of a naked Mayacamas hillside in the bend of a road.


Save for skeletal-white eucalypti,


all the rest is shadow of twilight.