The Vineyards

I did not write before because I would be forced to wish a Merry Christmas to everyone, which I did not wish to do, because the next post should bring unfortunate news that did not at all match a wish of Merry Christmas.

I do not remember the day, which I believe is fortunate (but I think it was on December 16th). After a very stressful week, full of nights spent awake, driving all over the city to get medicine, many exams, many attempts at finding out what was wrong, Charlotte, my Maltese dog, died. She was not put down; we tried until the last minute. When the veterinarians agreed there was no chance of recovery at all they did not need to do it. She suffered more during that week, that morning, than I did in my whole life.

I was at school when it happened, only heard it in the afternoon when I called home to ask if they would need the car to take her to any more exams. I was not warned before because I had a final test to do – and indeed, I would not have been able to do it if I had known.

ruby was with me when I heard, a fact for which I was tremendously grateful. I got her shirt a bit wet, but she did not mind.

I wish I could write this in a completely different way, as Flines, my sister did. She wrote a Christmas post, and midway in it mentioned she wished everyone to be happy. “My mother, my father, my brother, Sumi, Milu, and Char (who is somewhere in heaven wagging her tail for me).” Simple, adorable, makes one smile when reading even if it breaks such sad news. Flines is very good at writing. I should watch out.

Two weeks passed already, everything is fine again, the holidays (for other people; I barely have a week off, blasted be those unionists) kept everyone occupied and with their minds full. So no worried comments, all four of you. As Flines said, Char just went to wag her tail at us somewhere else. I hope she is getting along fine with Misha.

December 30th now. I can barely wait to switch the calendar. The new one is themed “Polar Animals”, it should be a delight to look at for the next pack of months.

Last Tuesday, December 7th, at about 10pm, I got on stage with nearly two hundred other people in the biggest concert hall in the country to sing the most well known piece of classical music ever. Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, 4th Movement: “Ode to Joy”.

The Tenors, among whom I stood, were to the left and back, behind the Contraltos; the Sopranos were to the right, in front of the Basses. Basses? Ah, whatever are called those tall strong guys with grave voice that always play the villains or some secondary character in operas, and are paid less. Those, yes.

The stage was packed. Because the choir area is too far away from the orchestra area it was decided to put the choir on the stage. And the choir seats, behind the stage, were all sold. So we had people looking at us from behind, and probably not hearing a thing. I doubt any of them paid any attention, but if they did they might had noticed one of the Tenors had a ring in his right hand that was identical to a ring in the right hand of one of the Sopranos – assuming they could see the Sopranos at all from there, not to mention their hands.

I knew very little about choirs before I joined the school’s choir. But I remember, whenever I listened to any piece with a choir, that I was quite sure of one thing: that those women singing with the high pitched voices must be saying the most beautiful lines, because obviously they represent the speech of angels – most classical tunes being religious and all.

When I joined the choir, most of what I had always assumed was proven wrong. The lyrics are nearly the same for everyone (except the soloists), so the women with high pitched voices do not represent the speech of angels. Honestly, I still think they do, but it is better not to argue.

But whether the Sopranos represent der Cherub that steht vor Gott or not, one among them was wearing in her right hand a ring identical to that Tenor’s. These two rings say “14-11-03″ inside of them, which, in Brazilian date notation, means November 14th, 2003. That was the day where the Tenor woke up quite early, drove in a completely different direction than usual, parked near a commercial area and paced outside for an hour waiting for the flower shops to open. And the six pink and six red roses kindly waited in their full beauty for almost four hours, when they finally found their way to the one they were meant to.

It was a wonderful year, completely different than all years before – which were looking very similar to each other. It was a year where things worked, where I found support in someone and gave support in return – and together we walked forward and dealt with issues and reached goals neither of us had dared to face or try before.

On December 7th, almost two hundred people who practiced hard for many months had a big achievement to celebrate, after getting up on stage and doing a great job in singing their Freude schöner Götterfunken. Two of those people had even more. It would have been bad writing by Fate’s hand if it had been exactly on November 14th, but even though almost a month late that concert crowned a beautiful year. And even though there were two hundred people on that stage, and about half of them were directly between that Tenor and that Soprano, those rings showed how close together they were.

A few months of choir lessons and a presentation taught me the women with high pitched voices are called Sopranos and they do not represent angels. Considering the past year, however, I must say there is an angel among them, after all.

- An angel with butterfly wings.

Happy thirteenth mensiversary, ruby-chan.

A few days ago a plague attacked these vines.

It was ruby who saw it first. She ran inside with a worried look upon her. “There is something very wrong with the Vineyards!”

I went outside to see what she was talking about. Nothing could be seen at first. “What is it?”, I asked. “It seems normal to me.”

“Look at the fields further down by the hills, and all the way back almost to the outer woods. Do you see?”

Something was wrong indeed. There was more green than common vines should bear. “What is that…”, I added rhetorically, already partially knowing the answer as I approached the greener vines, not wanting to believe what my instincts told me. My heart, in immobile stampede, was nearly halted when the first projectile hit my forehead, just above my left eye, and fell to the ground by my feet.

“Medicine..?” I looked down at what hit me and saw an ugly pill, which I picked up. It seemed tarnished, like it had been reprocessed in some way. On one side I saw markings that probably spelled some unpronounceable name before it was wiped; on the other side, in tiny letters, “penis enlargement”.

I opened my eyes wide, attempting to gather the absurdity of the situation, even though I expected it, when another pill hit me. This I caught in a quick reflex before it hit the ground, but soon dropped it, disgusted. Eroded, with spots of mold, the clearly expired blue square pill was not something I wanted to hold for long. Taking a few steps back to avoid being hit by the other flying pills and assortment of things I chose not to look closer at, I addressed ruby.

“They found this forgotten corner of the world. Where did they come from?”
“No idea. I just never thought they could sink so low.”

Perched on most of the vines were dreadful creatures known to everyone who ever had their name followed by a @ signal. They were desperately throwing cheap medicine and OEM software and Nigerian bank accounts and fake lolita pictures and business opportunities everywhere, while splurting out random babbling that sometimes resembled human language. Some of the more educated ones would compliment me on the quality of the grapes before throwing in a random direction whatever spoiled and fake offers they held. One came to the point of wearing a suit and hat and cane (but no shoes; slippers, instead, mismatched, with old smelly socks) and reciting a verse by Shakespeare.

I sighed and motioned to walk to the barn and drive out the MovableTank to remove those dreadful things from my yards, but as I reached into my pocket to get the barn’s key I saw ruby coming back from it.

“I will do it”, she said.
“I knew it could happen but ignored the threat, I should do it”, I replied.
“I am already at it”, she pointed out as she armed the first shell.
“I thank you, then. I will go find out where they came from.”

By the Vineyards’ gate sat the eversleepy slashstats guard. I was very glad to see he had been awake all November, as he often sleeps for entire months and I have to keep asking my caretaker to wake him up.

“slashstats, the Vineyards have been invaded. Tell me the name of all the people who came here in the last few days, and where they came from!”
“Huh? You came here a lot, sir.”
“Me? Oh, yes, I know I am the main visitor… such a shame… but ignore that! Who else came?”
“A bunch of people… but many just come to pick up the stuff that your sister keeps here…”
“I know, I know! Tell me who came here, to the Vineyards!”
“Sure… we had visits by twohundredfourtyseven dot ninetysix dot…”
“Nevermind that, nevermind! Just tell me where they have been coming from.”
“Uh… Some came from Yahoopolis, said they were told there were lyrics or music for download here… found none and left. Others came from Googleburg looking for anime… and… heh, one wanted an analysis of the ending of some anime… weird people… there was this one guy who wanted a shareware version of this old game by…”
“slashstat! Enough! Was there anything unusual?”
“Uhh… Do ya have any dealings with this php-soft.com business?”
“No… No, I do not. This looks very suspicious. Thank you, I will pay them a visit at once!”
“Kay… I’ll go back to sleep, then. See ya.”

Leaving ruby hard at her labor, I went after this mysterious “php-soft.com” business. The directions led me to a very dodgy looking building in a cheap neighborhood. The sign above the door had the place’s name painted in red over some markings that, I guessed, were the business’s previous name. I opened the door, which creaked loudly, and stepped inside.

Shelves and counters lined every wall from floor to ceiling. Jars and boxes and cages held creatures similar to those that invaded the Vineyards. I looked at some of the labels. “Submitter for forums, blogs, guestbooks”, “Multi-proxy for maximum anonymity”, “Mass posting script”…

I walked out and headed back to the Vineyards, ruby had finished cleaning everything.

“Whew! That was troublesome to do. But look, I found something.”

Amidst all the pills and OEM software, she had stumbled upon three people who insisted in saying, over a year later, that the song that says “she is feeling cynical, tired, the city lights can really blow your mind” is “Don’t Walk Away from Love” by Gregory Gray. One offered me a recording, and asked for its lyrics. They just did it over a year too late, I had already found out all that. Maybe I should put the lyrics somewhere around here, in case more wanderers come by looking for it.

I looked at ruby and she asked, “So, will you deal with that now?”, pointing to a little post-it note affixed to my coat that said “write about New Orleans”.

“Not yet”, I replied. “I suppose this invasion deserves mention of its own. New Orleans can wait.”

“Okay. But don’t delay it too much, you might make your two readers go away.”

“Aye. I will not.”

- Vamos unir nossos poderes! Papel!
- Tinta!
- Envelope!
- Selo!
- Lambida!

- Pela união dos seus poderes, eu sou o Capitão Carteiro!
- Vai, Carteiro!

Of course, I should naturally apologize first for not writing in so long, and then write about what I had been planning to, which is – I will let be known beforehand so it can be held against me later – New Orleans. Because Courtney went there (no, I did not).

Sometime soon.

The second Maxtor to fail me in six months will soon be sent back to its nest. The two weeks following its breakdown were spent in building my system back up to the point it was before that failure. The following three weeks went into solving a problem that resulted from these procedures, associated to the age of Asgaard.

Fortunately, from the ruins I could salvage nearly the entire contents of the broken partition – including my thousands of completely random and unorganized Mp3 files. In fact, the only losses were one anime series, one anime movie, and a number of partially downloaded files that would probably still not have completed – so I consider this bit a bonus.

All this work (and no play) happened during the misplaced end of term in college, into which more work hours have been put than into the rest of the semester. After that, my vacation began. It was a Thursday. The last day of vacation was Friday. On Monday I was back to school, trying in deep despair to find classes to attend, since the system gave me next to none.

As a result, this term I am part of the school chorus, and in early December I will be in a big hall, on stage with another hundred people, singing that the Cherub steht vor Gott. Beethoven’s 9th symphony, 4th movement, better known as “Ode to Joy” – in all its German glory.

And at the end of the presentation, to add dramacity to the act, one of the Tenors will die.

Yes, I am a Tenor. Who could ever guess. Who could, rather, ever imagine I would come to know it, after joining a chorus and singing Beethoven’s 9th.

The few hours each week I do not have the 9th echoing in my head I am paying attention to intricate techniques to read and transcribe old manuscripts, or trying to determine if a picture is result of carvings in metal, wood or rock. USP is a place of great randomness.

During these most stressing and strange times, what free time I was granted went into reading lots and lots of manga (which I should had read months ago, when they were being released – dumb, dumb) and playing a game or two. Will to post there was none. Truly your forgiveness I implore.

For now, nothing beyond this. I must hurry and enjoy this beautiful Saturday of bright cloudiness, before someone calls me to say I am late.

Of course I am. No news there, eh?