Today I rest. I need to take some time off. It’s been kind of a crazy week for some reason. I guess it’s partly the extra service on Wednesday evening. Also I had musical rehearsals on Monday and Tuesday evening. Last Sunday, I had a dinner engagement which left my head spinning a bit. This was all extra stuff in an already hectic (for me) schedule.
I got up more rested today than I have been. Still very tired but a bit better. I put Pablo Casals recording of the Bach Cello Suites on to sooth me a bit.

I first heard these while watching an old Inmar Bergman film. This would have had to have been in the late sixties or possibly early seventies. I mention this because I have a poignant association with these pieces. I subsequently became interested in Casals and read his autobiography. He influence my understand and love of Bach quite a bit.

So sitting in my kitchen years later listening to a dead man play music written hundreds of years ago and sipping coffee has a soothing effect.

I sat down and played through several movements of Bach’s first English suite this morning as well.

Elizabeth called from China. She and Eileen chatted until it was time for Eileen to go to work.

Then I got to talk to her awhile.

While sipping coffee this morning I was working my way through the New Oxford Begginer’s Chinese Dictionary exercises. It got very interesting this morning as the exercises walked me through understanding how Chinese words sometimes mean combinations of other words or syllabic meanings and sometimes they are adaptation of Western sounds.

For example: the word for train is really a combination of the words for fire and vehicle….. the word for the chinese violin, er hu, simply means “two strings.” The er hu has two strings. Whereas the chinese word for internet combines the word for network with two syllables that sound like the first two syllables of the english word [yin(1) and te(4) + wa(3)ng network or netting ] And so on.

It got me so interested that I started looking up words that weren’t in my little dictionary and ended up finding a very good online resource. Unfortunately, I think it combines traditional and modern characters….. but still very interesting. This dictionary also shows the Chinese (mandarin?) pronunciation and also the Cantonese and the Japanese Kun and Japanese Kin.
Not sure exactly what the Kun and Kin are but can surmise they are Japanese variants.

So when I looked up the chinese for piano, I found that the characters really mean “steel lute.” Glancing over the “lute” character information I see that the Japanese Kun pronunciation for this same character is “koto.” Koto! Hey I know what a koto is…. it’s one of them thar Japanese zithers….

Anyway. I am finding this fun if not rententively informative.

Elizabeth and I chatted about this kind of thing and other stuff like the bombardment of western culture in China and how it is often misunderstood in funny ways.

I am beginning to really look forward to this trip. Not the least of it will be conversations with Elizbeth, Jeremy and Eileen.