Stuff that happened on Friday Jan 27

Mozart had another birthday. So did Ken Marks, I learned today.

With a single word, I saved a pedestrian from being run down by my taxi driver, who had looked down as he dealt with the dials of his defrost system to get more frontal visibility. He thanked me for my help throughout the reminder of the trip, which had started with him explaining, after I had put on my seat belt, that I really didn’t need to wear it. Thanks to his sparing use of the defrost and wiper fluid – he didn’t want to run out of fluid unexpectedly – the windshield obstructed our view of the road ahead for most of the time. Later he started rolling down his window at intersections to take photos of roadside winter scenes. This I found charming – I might have done the same if I were driving –until he continued doing it while the car was in motion. We did arrive however.

I tried a new cello by a local maker, a supposedly run-of-the-mill instrument that sounded surprisingly good. Better than my own in fact. So I hurried home after the rehearsal and did something about it. It’s all in the strings – new strings, new cello. I switched to a set of Kaplan strings by D’Addario, departing this time from the standard Larsen or Jargar + Spirocore combination. So far sounds good.

An Unexpected Crossing

It seemed like the whole town was out in the rain on Friday, Jan. 6 for the celebration of Bogoyavlenie (Epiphany) in Rila. The real show started around 11:30AM, after the priests finished the indoor service and came down from the hillside church, crossed the central square, and then made their way to one of the several bridges across the Rila river, leading the procession across it. Then they set up shop on the other side, blessing all comers with holy water, which the residents also bottled for future use (self-blessing?). Down at the river itself, some of the town’s younger male residents gathered in anticipation of the ritual cross throwing. Whoever brought the cross up from the water would lead the door-to-door blessings the following day (Ivanov den, celebrating John the Baptist) and would receive various gifts from the local households for doing so. About a dozen lads were ready to get wet and shoved around a bit in the river for this honor as their neighbors observed from on and around the bridge. I didn't see an ambulance standing by, but representatives of the local law enforcement were on hand in case someone got…cross. 

 Waiting for the cross toss

The cross has been tossed

Up by the riverside

The holy-water table, the main priest presiding. Residents hurry to get blessed, 

stock up on holy water, and join the procession back toward the church

After the show we walked up the hill to the church because we’d never been by there when it was actually unlocked. The main priest (in yellow in the photo above) was just on his way out as we debated whether the icons around the entrance were by the same group of Samokov iconographers that did the church at the Rila Monastery up the road. We asked him, and his reply, hurried but not unfriendly, was, “It’s written somewhere over there,” motioning in the general direction of the church before hopping into a well-used black Ford compact and driving off. Oh, he’s got more gigs today, I thought. Of course – every town around here’s got a river somewhere waiting to be…crossed. 

When we stopped by a friend’s place the next day to pick up some pickled cabbage and try some homemade red wine, who should come by but the cross-bearers, making their blessing rounds. One (at right in photo below) crossed us each in turn with a bough of boxwood dipped in holy water, then held out the cross (the very same one that he had retrieved from the river) for us to kiss. His assistant (in red jacket, at left in photo below) held the broad metal plate that we put coins and banknotes on in thanks. Our host made an additional gift – a two-liter bottle of his wine. I was sad to see it go, thinking naively that this was his only bottle. Imagine my relief when I looked back at the table, and another one had already appeared in its place. 

 OK, the wine bottle was on the floor...

New Year's Notes from Rila

(To the tune of the Corelli Concerto grosso in D Major, Op. 6, No. 1)

 

The second day of 2012 and the second day of sun in Rila. The balcony is awash in midday light. So is the river. Saturday’s fresh snow, still coming down as we woke up that day, has now melted off the tall trees guarding the river, but remains on the round shaded shrubs like so many white hats.

Photo 1: Snow on Saturday, Dec. 31, 2011

On Monday the midday light streaming onto the balcony through the open spaces in the woodwork had attained a kind of permanence even before I brought out my pink camera and started rearranging the balcony furniture to capture it.

Photos 2 and 3: Midday balcony sun, Jan. 1 and 2, 2012

To my surprise the sun’s presence in the composition is seen not only in the light on the balcony floor and in the shiny flashes from the river, but also in the rays coming through the openings between the wooden slats. I didn’t know that the sun’s rays could actually be visible in a photo without getting an unwanted vertical streak of light. Visible sun rays – isn’t Photoshop for effects like that, I thought?  Only now, writing this, does it occur to me that, if you position yourself the right way in the door to the balcony and squint in the right toward the sun, you can see the rays without a camera lens. Let me get up and try this. Yes, you can.

This is how the sun was hitting the hills east of Rila around 4pm on the 2^nd

Rila hills looking west toward the town: a head-on sun shot

Following the goats home 

(the English portion of the sign for the entrance to Babinska mahala, 

I noticed just now, incorrectly reads “Banska mahala”)

Still trailing the goats through Babinska mahala, a sunset view of the town. 

Yet again a mysterious passing plane has left its white streak in my photo. 

If I photoshopped, it would be the first thing to go…