Life Begins

So it is Tuesday of the first month of the new year 2017.   I no longer marvel at this momentous movement of the calendar as I did when I was young; just too many years have gone by to get excited.  I have been reading in Sebastian Smee's book about the rivalry between Matisse and Picaso, and noting that it was most part entirely civil, never ill mannered.  Much is made of the patronage of the San Francisco Stein family, two branches, equipped with vast sums for buying art, and the Russian moguls who before the Revolution bought widely in Paris, and ironically enough because of state confiscations filled their countries' galleries with contemporary art, the very best.  I have never liked Cubism particularly; I don't respond to it, which is more or less how I judge art.  I am thrilled by Picasso's draftmanship, love those stolid prehistoric ladies, but I guess it is the colors of Matisse that win me.  At the time it seemed to be a popularity contest which is detestable, just as the Times describing contemporary art by what it brings at auction.  But enough of art, must think about my impending class, starting next Thursday week.  This Thursday we have an introductory meeting with all the faculty--coffee and cookies--and I will get to take a glimpse of my classroom.  I am too unstable to stand without support, so I hope there is a lecturn or something similar I can lean against.  One and one half hours.  I hate to sit to teach.  I have gone over the material, a text which I have lectured about certainly upwards of fifty times, not to mention which forms the subject of several books and articles I have written.  It's like all those script readings, rehearsals, blocking, tech, and then it is the day you perform.  More immediately I must go grocery shopping.  The cupboard is bare, so to speak.  If I were to go now--it's just a little after eight, the traffic would perhaps be minimal, my husband is not awake to put in his two cents.  We are planning to cook lasagna for our student and his girl friend on Sunday, actually I was, but my husband has decided he should cook it because I am old and burdened with teaching.  But then there is the recipe.  I found on on the web I really like.  He is however a fuddy duddy; he will have this recipe that he used thirty or forty years ago.  We are so much more sophisticated about Italian herbs, etc.  All this will have passed him by, or eluded him.  I see that I have made my bed, and so I can just up and leave.