Muñoz Rojas

Pre-departure madness. Tomorrow morning I leave for Malaga, and I 'm not ready. This is not an infrequent feeling for me: Wait. Not yet! Perhaps this is common to us winter babies born far from the equator. Hold on! Well, it will be a fun few days and with the brief voice mail left by María del Mar I can't help but feel more eager to go: make no plans for Friday night... everyone's coming over for dinner... On the other hand, the news last week that José Antonio Muñoz Rojas has died just one week short of his hundredth birthday was quite sad. I was so looking forward to finally meeting him. I guess it wasn't meant to be. But the conference/ homage goes on, and I think my talk will be fun, even though I'm not quite ready. I'll be talking about reading Muñoz Rojas in a wider, English-speaking context (I propose that being attuned to his interest in the relationship between poetry and philosophy will be quite helpful, as it's the best available path, I believe, for contextualizing his work), and will finish with a discussion of some of my ideas about translating his poetry. Yesterday I was finishing up translations of poems by Isabel Pérez Montalbán and Claudia Aburto Guzmán for our Semana Poética. I hope to see Isabel in Malaga. Too much translating in one day: ugghh, it got into my sleep (language!) and so here I am, not even five A.M. and up and at it...

On the home front: Daniela came out of ballet last night tired (a private class at 2:30, then class and rehearsals until 9:30, on a Monday, after a dozen hours of dancing over the weekend!), but oh so happy. And it wasn't about rehearsal. No, she is now the proud owner of seven or eight pairs of pointe shoes from... Ashley Bouder, star of New York City Ballet. (Top professional ballerinas get their shoes custom made and I guess these were trials. I don't know, but Bouder sent them here and they fit Daniela.) In any case, those are some serious shoes to fill! Did Yaz ever send me a glove or one of his bats? Did Bill Russell ever send me a signed basketball? Oh well, I'm happy for Daniela, and happy for me: hey, that's some serious money we just saved. I see the table in the back hall piled high with "old" pointe shoes and think, damn, get me some stock in one of those companies.

Speaking of money, on Saturday night CPYB had its first ever fundraising gala. It was a very nice and, I trust, successful event. Silent auction, live auction... food and drink... dancing... Daniela and some of the others did a brief scene from Peter Pan and then there was a short piece choreographed by Lazlo Bardo. Beautiful. Someone paid over $1500 for a one hour class with Marcia Dale Weary. Show the respect! Want some serious silliness: someone bid $500 for one of my paellas. OK, this is Carlisle, not the big city. No million dollar pledges, which is what the school could really use, but the spirit was right and the appreciation for what CPYB does, and Marcia in particular, was heartfelt and sincere.

And apples! A kitchen full of apples is a wonderful sight.