gainful employment

hired at the Italian cafe... the kitchen is about 14x15 feet. Possibly the smallest comprehensible space in which to serve food to 60 seats. Two burners, a flat top, toaster, mini pizza oven, panini press, slicer, waffle maker, two fridges and a freezer. Oh, and a sink. Somehow it all works. Two people fit nicely and it is not a big pain in the ass to mop.

My chef, Ali, is Iranian. He looks exactly like the actor who played the Iranian colonel in House of Sand and Fog (an alternately wonderful and awful film). He and his family escaped Iran just after the revolution and the death of his father-a colonel in the Shah's army... He speaks quickly and tends to go off on tangents sort of related to food... but not really. Because I only worked with him on Friday, and wasn't there for a large rush, I still have no idea what he will be like when the shit is firmly lodged in the fan. I'll probably find out sooner or later, as I will be the only other person within a two foot radius chef rage will be experienced at close range.

Terminal exhaustion seems to rule my life. That and a meal time schedule. Eating every 4 hours seems bizarre to me, but I guess that is a measure of how much I need this structure. Grocery shopping tomorrow for actual food, and then a gigantic leap onto the bandwagon of...health? well being? For a start, I'll take a simple reduction of neurosis.

Ballet class yesterday was wonderful. Only four of us and a grey drizzly day. The simplicity of movement sooths me. Exercises I could do in my sleep require precise concentration to achieve perfect technique. It is somehow a physical meditation: focusing my mind on achievable details while simultaneously allowing it to detach. (ha ha ha, if read correctly the previous sentence asserts that ballet detaches my mind... how ironically correct!) Right now though, it makes me happy.

Especially humbling are the rest of the women in the class. All of them rank beginners, they approach dance with an energy and joyousness that blows my mind. I cannot comprehend ballet without baggage. And they are weightless. We laugh a lot. Such a revelation to me.

Exiting the studio and into the crackling autumn wind- complete with apropriately coloured leaves and children wearing scarves- I am buoyed by limber muscles and a peaceful mind right over to the music faculty where my peaceful mind is shattered by rehearsing the hardest choir music I have ever seen. Really. This shit is for real. Yesterday we just read the recital rep, and it's a good thing we don't perform it until March, because it will take me at least that long to get the notes, let alone the shifting time signatures. Nicholle's recital is a PhD exam, and thus the rest of us have to be up to her capabilities. The music blows my mind and my sight reading skills. Recently moved to Alto 1 from 2nd sop, I am having to listen damn hard to find myself in the chord.

Thus I find myself employed in various pursuits other than school. Hmmm better fix that soon. Right after I make Nina dinner and and unplug the drain in my shower.