Villa I Cancelli

On a continuing conventual note, I have been accepted into the convent of the Suore Orsoline di San Carlo. No, not as a postulant, but as a paying guest. I found the Villa I Cancelli on a site called Monastery Stays, which offers convent and monastery accommodation for travellers in Italy. I stayed in a convent in Venice using the same website, and it was great. It's particularly good for women travelling alone, no strange men trying to get into your room or steal your stuff. Very clean, well-situated with breakfast included in the price, which is very reasonable. There is usually a curfew, very strictly applied, but if you're not a nightclubber/party dude this is fine. I'm usually so tired from sightseeing that an early night is all I want.
    Villa I Cancelli is up in the hills to the north of Florence, a part of the city that I had no time to explore last time I was there. Google Villa I Cancelli Florence and drool.

Hildegard von Bingen - Columba aspexit

Illuminations

Just finished 'Illuminations' by Mary Sharratt, a novel about Hildegarde of Bingen. I enjoyed it, but, as with all historical novels, so much has to be invented by the author, particularly when the subject is an eleventh-century visionary saint. Her official life, the Vita Sanctae Hildegardis, is full of things that the modern mind can hardly credit; miracles, prophesies and visions, taking us into the realm of folklore and legend rather than historical biography.
   Her music speaks for itself, though. Many years ago now, I bought a copy of  "Feather on the breath of God", a compilation of Hildegarde's songs. Beautiful music, very different to the very orthodox and programmatic Gregorian chant sung by monks as part of the Divine Office, full of wonderful imagery and glorious harmonies that were all Hildegarde's own.
   The best thing about her music is that most of it was composed specifically for the female voice, so a woman (or women) can sing along with it without having to lower or transpose her own voice. Hildegarde has become something of a feminist/New Age heroine, because of her visions of the feminine aspect of God.  She was tried for heresy, her visions considered so unorthodox that they might have come from Ole Scrat himself, particularly after she castigated her male colleagues for their corruption in a blistering sermon delivered in Cologne in 1170. The German Lutheran church considers her to be a prophet of the Reformation, and she continues to inspire people from all parts of the religious spectrum.

Quiet and the New Yoga

 

I've just finished "Quiet; the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking" by Susan Cain. Very interesting, full of aha! moments for innies like me. One of my favourites was her statement that blogging is tailor-made for introverts. We can consider what we write, cancel it, change it, so it comes out saying exactly what we want. Unlike speech, where words once said cannot be recalled and edited. The introvert, who stresses out completely at having to give a speech to 20 people, is totally unfazed at blogging to an audience of 20 million! I had to give a short presentation recently, what a train wreck. I don't think I even know what I said, and I caught one of my colleagues looking totally horrified, as if she had never realised that I could balls something up so conclusively.
   One of the things about modern life that so horrifies me, is how noisy everything has to be. Even yoga, the age-old practice of quiet meditation in physical form, has been transformed into something hip and young and noisy. A recent edition of Yoga Journal, a magazine that I used to look at quite regularly, made me feel sick. It's now full of adverts for slick merchandise, covering gorgeous young bodies in peak condition. The articles about meditation are gone, replaced with an almost total obsession with the acquisition of a gorgeous body. There are celebrity yogis and yoginis, advertising their own particular 'brand' of yoga, with attendant merchandising.  And the advert on the back cover sums it up:

   Freestyle yoga and a killer playlist make Goldie's Wednesday night black light class one of out favourites. It's like a party you never want to leave.

Killer play list? Black light class? Party? No way. The extroverts have taken over yoga, damn them. They ruined libraries ("we want them bright and buzzy with things going on") said our extrovert library planner, now yoga hits the deck. (Funnily enough, the biggest demand in our libraries at present is for quiet places where people can study, how hopelessly un-hip).
    Introverts unite! Take back the world!
 

 

 

Mr Collins

I had occasion the other day to renew my acquaintance with one of, nay, my most annoying customer. I realise I should not write about other people, but really, it is beyond temptation. This man is my Nemesis. I shall call him Mr Collins, though this is not his real name.
  This is a man who always, always has something wrong with his account. Fines not paid, books assumed lost, card left at home or also lost. For some reason, these things are all the library's fault, never his own. He is a pompous ninny, who once asked me, in his pompous ninny voice, "I don't understand why I get all these fines; isn't there a special card I can have?"
    No, there is not. And even if there was, you would lose it, Mr Collins. And why are you so special that you should have a special card?
    Oh, he does try my patience sorely. I was reduced at one instance to informing him, that no, he could not get another card because he had 'mislaid' his current one. The library did not issue cards for the amusement and employment of its staff, I said. This is about as rude as I have ever been to a customer.
    I had not seen him for some years, and hoped that he had gone away, but no, there he is still, that great rock of obtuse stupidity against which the futile waves of common sense break and leave no trace.

Countdown

Only four more days of work and I've got two weeks off. Yes, I am counting the hours.

Pseudo-Friday night

It's odd working weekends. Tonight is Tuesday and I have the next two days off, so tonight is my pseudo-Friday night. I do get confused sometimes, especially first thing in the morning. "What day is it? Do I have to work today?" Added to the fact that I work in two different places, I'm sure one day I'll turn up on the wrong day in the wrong place, causing my colleagues a great deal of amusement.
     Tomorrow is the 4th of September, the third anniversary of our first large earthquake. It struck at 4.40 in the morning, waking everyone and terrifying everyone, but no one was killed although there was a lot of damage throughout the province. It was a long quake, about 40 seconds, and as I crouched under the dining-room table muttering Hail Marys, ("now and at the hour of our deaths") I thought it would not end until everything was destroyed and I was dead. It did stop. I found a mouthful of whisky in a bottle that had fallen over, and very good it was too. Then I went out into the garden. The stars were bright and shining in the frosty air and I had the illogical thought "I wonder if they know what happened here".
     Tomorrow is also the second anniversary of my mother's death. It's so unfair that death cuts us off from each other so completely. If only we could be allowed to talk on the phone to our departed ones. That's what I miss most, just the inconsequential daily chat about little ordinary things, particularly those memories that we shared as members of the same family. Now there's no one to talk to about my childhood, or to remember funny old Mrs Malone next door, with her purple hair and incontinent cat. Ho hum.