Worlds Apart

In his book, The Open Work ,Umberto Eco introduced me to two ideas that I continue to carry with me: the incomplete nature of art until it is received, and the impossibility of receiving a work of art in the same way more than once.  We said goodbye to Mahler's world yesterday, performing and receiving it all at once and releasing it to an ephemeral connection with those in the room.  Perhaps I'll play it again, whatever that means.

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I woke up this morning to a world of a day off.  A three day buffer between Mahler and Berg and the next concert of Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Mozart.  Three new worlds to grace.  And what better way to bolster the buffer than with a trip to the Japanese second-hand store.  Waiting for a purchase inspiration that never came, I was happy to discover a sight familiar in second-hand stores in America.  I felt as though I was seeing another species of finch in a far-off land, or rather, some proof of the teleology of second-hand store evolution.

unsortable things
hung in little plastics bags
sold at a flat rate

Memories of visits to the Village Thrift Store when I was a child came back to me.  After shopping we could pick one of these bags and discover treasures in it;  random costume jewelry, pins, figurines, board game pieces, all the things that sink to the bottom of "I'll put it somewhere later," drawers  until later becomes moving and moving becomes making it someone else's task to sort and sell.  And for a child, heaven.  Incarnate in Japan.

Later in the evening, after some close calls with jazz cooking and a make-shift lentil curry dip, I headed to a friend's apartment for a birthday dinner she was having for her husband.  She is French and had cooked so much delicious food and baked several different cakes.  And an hour into the evening, some of our Japanese friends came and brought a seasonal sushi offering.

smiling seaweed salmon and egg sushi
(with egg cutout cat and stars)

And then I left and said goodbye to the world of seasonal sushi.  Such cute smiling faces, you'll never be eaten again.