20

Early this morning, dark outside.  I got my breakfast and through the windows it was suddenly dusky pink, dense winter branches in silhouette, softly glowing sky.  Then off to gym where I exercised all my muscles, then ran 1.4 miles (2.25km). 

On the way home I spotted a hawk in a tree over Bothways Farm pond, so rushed home for Tim's long lens and slithered and slid back down the icy hill and around the corner, where I smiled to find it patiently waiting for me. 

Wallpaper: Hawk and visitor

Still too far away really, but beautiful to see, the red-tailed hawk.  Even though they are the most common bird of prey in North America I am still thrilled every time I see one.

We have occasionally had them attacking birds at the bird-feeder and once when I returned from a conference I was pleased and surprised that Tim had maintained the seed in the bird-feeder.  I thanked him but he guiltily revealed that he had had an ulterior motive.  He had seen a hawk in the area and had been hoping to lure it by feeding its potential prey! 

And that is part of their fascination for us, aside from their aerodynamic perfection, their prodigious wingspan, it is that they deal swift termination, these beautiful raptors, death in their talons, pure purpose in the eye.  And although I feel sorry for the little vole, or mouse, or dark-eyed junco which meets a violent bloody death, a few of them who are many, are worth the survival of these magnificent creatures at the top of the chain.

This is the photograph I would have liked to have taken!

My other resolution was to really become proficient at music theory.  I learned quite a lot when I was a child, but we learned the British version, whose basic notes are the romantic sounding breves, semi-breves, minims and crotchets.   The American system uses the much simpler and easier to understand whole notes, half notes, quarter-notes, etc.  Which seems ironic in a way, because America still insists on using the ridiculously antiquated English Imperial measuring system instead of the simpler metric one.

It is like learning another language, filled with strange names and symbols. Did you know that there are things called Diatonic Modal Chords?  And that modes come in seven forms: Lydian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Aeolian, Phrygian and Locrian?

This is frighteningly incomprehensible to me, and luckily it is quite far into the book, where I have not yet travelled.  Hopefully by the time I get there I will be accomplished enough to decipher this befuddlement.

I am still at the clapping and counting phase, drawing rests and time signatures and whatnot.  Some of it is so difficult, and then all at once it will make sense, like finding a puzzle piece which suddenly fits.  So I struggle, from sudden bursts of sense through bogs of foggy quicksand, on to the welcome light-bursts of more sense.

I am hoping that I will have a better understanding of the music that I play, and that it will enhance my interpretation and expression, so that the notes from my fingers will unfurl like colourful soundwaves into the room, wafting into the ears of the listeners, floating, enchanting...