slow sunday morning x
Californian Mountains earlier this July.
Good afternoon! It's just before 5 o'clock on my balcony, and the smog from the Ontarian forest fires has finally blown away from the city for now, hence the lazing outside. The morning part of the slow sunday morning hasn't had any meaning for a long time now. 10 of them now!
I woke up late today, about noon, snoozing on and off after coming home in the wee hours of the morning last night. Summer in the city, what else am I to do but enjoy it while I can? On the chair across from me, which is usually reserved for my mother when she and my dad have their morning/afternoon/evening coffee (as the youngest, I'm usually relegated to the plastic stool in the corner), a monarch butterfly has landed. My coffee's done now, but I appreciate her visit nonetheless. Come to think of it, it's been a long time since I last saw a monarch butterfly.
I've been getting back into piano lately, and want to take it more seriously this time rather than just playing pieces for the sake of it. I'm sure anyone who plays piano shares this sentiment, but there are few things that bring me more joy than meeting a new piano out in the wild. While visiting someone very dear all the way in California (a story for another time), I got to play the beautiful baby grand in their living room for just a few minutes. Such a warm tone, smooth and deep. Every piano sounds different, but I have a soft spot for the really mellow ones. Sometimes I think they're sentient in some form or another...
My old theory and study books have been dug up from the archives, and I've steadily been going through all of the scales and training that's been long forgotten. I've come to realize that you can't have one without the other, at least not if you want to play the magnum opus level pieces without immense difficulty or failure. I've written about my piano hobby several times on this blog, however since I started picking it up again back in 2024 (and I will say, I cringe now at the way I wrote just two years ago), I've made massive improvements from my previous status as de facto ex-communicated from piano. Onward, onward.