This year the Easter bunny duties were for the most part assumed by J., who assembled the table picturesquely, with a great deal of chocolate eggs in brightly coloured foil, the plate whereupon a sugar-dusted cake lamb reposed as a present from a family friend, Maltesers (the confectionery), an orange for everyone, and a belled goldwrapped chocolate bunny on each of our little plates.
While I waited for the others to wake up, I began watching the Easter mass from St. Peter's Square at 10:14, thanks to ZDF's internet livestream. I didn't get very far in, but did hear the reading in English from Corinthians. (Puzzled by the unelevated language of the text, I later lamented that the Catholic church didn't seem to be using the King James Bible any more, whereupon Mama et al. groaned and I remembered that England was Anglican by King James's time.) The German voiceovers were a pain, but some of the commentary was useful. I liked the way that the garb and postures of the deacon, cardinals, etc. resembled those in medieval paintings, as if someone had animated them for my benefit — and I loved the flower arrangements, which were in fine taste in my opinion — it turns out that they are Dutch —, arranged with an eye to the manner in which greenery and blossoms naturally disperse and group themselves.
Then came the Easter breakfast. There I forgot the eggs so that they boiled a good eight or nine minutes despite the loftiest intentions. This year there was no to-do of dye or watercolour paint, though J. has painted his own eggshell in a design which was intended to resemble Islamic art and which I thought (and said, perhaps tactlessly and at any rate to a bemused audience) looked very Celtic. It has a little green but a lot of dark berry red and black and gold, and shapes of hares with a thick band of ornamental pattern as a kind of Greenwich Meridian/(straight) International Date Line. At any rate, we did eat raisin bread and graham bread and freshly baked rolls (dough of industrial provenance) with jam, cheese, egg, or ham. The tea and coffee were also toastily-hot and at the ready.
After that our paths diverged.
On the computer where I usually spend my time, a YouTube playlist of the Messiah was running and taking a long time to reach the Hallelujah chorus, but when it finally did we heard it from the other rooms because the sound was turned all the way up. (This volume setting would cause problems later, but never mind. (c: )
Papa and Mama have been restoring order to the apartment by buying chests of drawers, a wardrobe and cabinets to store all our stuff. They are enthusiastic about it; I am not. And in true wet-blanket fashion, it must be evident that I annoyingly wonder why this must be done all at once, agitatedly and stressfully, instead of in leisurely increments which allow time for relaxation, thought and planning.
When it comes to storage, I am very leery of storing clothing in drawers. They are havens for moths, a subject upon which I have become humourless throughout the past years. The chest of drawers was destined for a corner of T.'s and my room where I kept my odds and ends in a heap, and besides had rigged an elegant offset modernist series of shelves with supernumerary [Edit: 'certain Scandinavian furniture company'] planks and cigar boxes, designed to let air and light through and thus discourage the moths. Mama asked me to clean up the corner so that she could put in my chest of drawers. I was not greatly enamoured of the idea. But having comported myself like a mannerless ruffian, I felt it proper to atone; also it would obviously save valuable time to do what I'd do in the end anyway; and after all the parents had bought me a chest of drawers, so it wouldn't do to be graceless, etc. Still, encountering some three or four larvae later, which is a fractional quantity of the whole precisely because experience had taught me not to look too closely, even tearing open a pristine unopened package of moth paper and laying it out did not quite requite the disagreeability of the task. Lastly, I don't consider it the first thing I'd think of as a fitting exercise on Easter.
After the [Edit: 'certain Scandinavian furniture company']-assembling activity had died down, and my brothers and I had given up on watching the Daily Show with Jon Stewart via internet because it 'buffer'ed at an irregular snail's pace, and I had played two short pieces by Schumann on the piano, I had the corner room all to myself and turned on the television.
***
First there was news; secondly, there was (much to my surprise) the Oxford vs. Cambridge boat race. It's been mentioned in 20th century books I've read, but I was a great deal surprised to see it being kept up. My rather romantic ideas were lightly confounded when I discovered that it is a full-on athletic event now. The rowers wear bodysuits and work with state-of-the-art equipment; their selection for rowing is highly competitive and in fact some of the rowers have been in the Olympics; the rowers often have American accents; and now the race is covered with television commentary. The mother of one of the rowers(?) impressed me tremendously, however, since she appeared very refined. She was the sort of person I imagined would attend Ladies' Day at Ascot rather than the cheerful vulgarians (I like them, too, but they are not at all what I once expected) whom one sees in the news. The BBC team with Cla
Before the race, the BBC ran retrospective reporting on last year's boat race. First, a protester had entered the water and interrupted the race; and through the reportage it became clear how brutal this was for the rowers — to have their bodies strained to the breaking-point at the first rush out of the gate, but at least have developed momentum to keep them going for the rest of the race, only to have their mindset interrupted by a grandstander. (This year there were inflatable powerboats full of Marines to guard the waters, which I thought was a rather American kind of overkill.) Secondly, the oars of Oxford's and Cambridge's boats had struck each other, and the paddle end broke off the oar of an Oxonian rower. Since breakages in equipment are regarded as the responsibility of a team, the umpire did not call off the race so that the oar could be replaced, which is I think something which should henceforth be rectified in the rules. Oxford therefore lost.
Thirdly, the rower at the stern of the boat collapsed and had to have medical attention. In advance of this year's race, he appeared in an interview for the BBC and I was rather shocked at how traumatized he seemed by the affair, though it is probably impolitely intrusive to notice. There was a terribly sad look to his eyes; he appeared to have lost all faith in himself. To be honest I think that in the course of the year he should have been buried under enough academic work, personal developments, etc., to put the experience in perspective — though if he was worried that he would collapse again at inopportune moments it is simple to understand. He was not a 'True Blue' (i.e. in the racing boat) this year, but he was in the reserve; if I understood correctly, the reserves had their own race and he won in it, and looked half as if he would collapse again and half extremely relieved and vindicated.
This year Oxford won, leaving Cambridge in the dust — a little revanche for last year, probably, and everyone seemed content. I, however, was rather hoping that Cambridge would win, simply for its team, this year. The scene was grand enough, and I thought it was interesting as a detail to see the tremendous wakes of the powerboats curl up in a high ridge against the mossed shorelines.
***
Since then I have lolled about on the internet and off it, and the lamb is roasting in the oven, and the potatoes are all peeled (by Papa). Since I have nothing else planned for today which I'd mention, here is a brief mention of what I did the day before yesterday:
THE DAY before yesterday I went on my lonesome to Potsdam, partly to revisit it after the first time I went there and really loved it five or so years ago, and partly to take photos and see if I could track down houses by a famous architect in Babelsberg. The first part of the programme was already exhausting enough, so Babelsberg was postponed to a more auspicious date. Potsdam, I think, has changed rather for the worse in terms of its tranquil time-wormhole atmosphere, though the cutesification and touristification is probably nicer for its residents, and all the bare and uglyish construction sites which conversely do not look cute or tourist-attracting at all will be gone soon enough. But travelling in practically empty trains (they felt like my own private trains, they were so empty) on a snowy and contemplative Good Friday was a really lovely and sort of surreal experience. The views of the pine forest along the railroad tracks were beautiful too, especially when snow dropped from the branches or when human figures and dog figures made their way across the pure white backdrop. On one allotment garden shed there was an icicle at least as long as my arm. In the middle of the tracks there were many out-of-service trains, resting.
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