Monday, August 20, 2001

I have until 9 AM to complete this post. Then I am going to start studying. I just finished breakfast--toast, an orange, and tea with milk. Today's agenda: write weblog until 9 AM; study until noon; take shower, eat lunch, etc.; prepare for reading; drive out to school; photocopy essay from book I have to return; return recalled books; go to reading; come home and make dinner; wash dishes; pick up living room a bit.

Saturday I finished converting a top sheet to a fitted sheet. It fits perfectly! Saturday evening I went to a concert at church performed by the music director, Rudolfas Budginas. He's preparing for a five-concert tour of Hungary, so he played all Liszt piano works. Incredibly beautiful and technically dazzling!

Well, it's already just past 9 o'clock. I wasted a bunch of time looking for a listing of Liszt's complete works online to no avail. (Rudolf didn't have a printed program; he just told us what he was going to play before he played it. I want to make sure I have the correct titles of the pieces.)

Why 9 o'clock? C. S. Lewis writes about his ideal schedule in Surprised by Joy, a schedule he kept as a private student of Mr. Kirkpatrick.
[I]f I could please myself I would always live as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought to me about eleven, so much the better....At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road [alone]....Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the out-door world....The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four....At five a man [!] should be at work again, and at it till seven. (pp. 115-116)
What strikes me about this ideal existence is that Lewis's meals (even tea and coffee!) are provided by another person.

More on this subject another time. But now I must begin "the one thing needful" for this moment.

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