silentlucidity

OOC-Relationship/feelings

2009-10-24T16:40:44Z

Itachi's relationships change periodically and don't get added in until he meets someone. If you don't see yourself here, it probably means you need to prod me so we can get our plot on! If I'm forgetting someone, hit me with something large and remind me who you are-It's probably just that I forgot.

Ordered alphabetically:

Haruno Sakura: Though his take on this particular person is a limited one built on interaction solely via journal bantar, he can say that she seems nice. And he's happy to have a name and warm body for his charter.

Nara Shikamaru: Journal banter. No other information or thoughts.

Tenten: Ohhh, Tenten. Due to his love for all things piano, she has already found a permamant spot on Itachi's list of "Things I Do Not Hate." However, he is conflicted with what he's starting to understand is attraction for her because of his heavy respect for rules and the belief that a student is a student and a teacher is a teacher. That aside, though, he is coming to find that she is turning into his friend-which is strange, to say the least. The whole situation strikes him as horribly inappropriate. He doesn't have many friends so her general lack of annoyingness and music love make him a very happy camper indeed.

Uchiha Sasuke: This kid's name gives him nightmares and is causing him unpleasant feelings of what could almost be called 'mothering.' He finds Sasuke snarky, rude, and has the sneaking suspicion that either Sasuke is absolutely brilliant and lost or he's bound for janitor-dom and someone very close to him has been lying to him about just how clever he is. Either way, the name alone is enough to keep his patience in tact despite his deep dislike for disrespect and/or rudeness. He's pretty sure Sasuke is seeking him out as a target for some of his rude snarkiness but Itachi is interested to gleam what he can from whatever interaction they have.

The only reason that Itachi isn't frantically asking this kid questions about his past is because he was told, and believes to this day, that his brother was murdered. And though the name is like some unpleasant ghost from Christmas Past, it's just a name. And until he sees some pretty solid evidence that this mean, snarky brat is his brother, it will continue to simply be a name.

Uzumaki Naruto: Against his better judgement (and while taking a severe beating from his need for avoiding anything deemed 'inappropriate'), Itachi is coming to....be amused and kind of like Naruto's strange and flirty journal banter. It's out of the norm for him-and possibly dangerous since he abhors chatter-but his sense of curiousity takes president over his irritation.

He thinks Naruto is kind of funny in a very inappropriate and unpleasant way. Were Itachi still in college and not a teacher, he would probably hate Naruto but keep around any way to idly flirt with. It gives him a bit of an Ego Stroke. He's a pretty Uchiha-what can ya do?

silentlucidity @ 2009-10-23T23:01:00

2009-10-24T05:20:18Z

See edit 17-Call about the name of the cafe. Piccolino's wasn't in Parma. I have no idea what it was.
See edit 34-Balu? Belu? Barlow? Don't I have a picture?
See edit 35-1980 something.
See edit 49-Structure.
-----------Edit 50-Scratch that. Bad translation. See 'Of Mice and Men.'
See edit 7-Cut lines 12-17, 22-25. Recanted. Call, I think.

Add to page 238, below "....the center tower."

Her name sounded nothing like 'Ophelia' but I couldn't shake the impression that she had been torn from Waterhouse's painting and thrown, madness intact, into Parma's nightlife. Beautiful, ghostlike, absolutely ethereal, she-the Modern, Mad Ophelia-transfixed us all. For a time, as we watched her wander, aimless, we were silent.

We were all thinking the same thing but didn't have the voice to give it words.

Like Gertrude, like Denmark's servants, we were watching her lean over that stream, garlands dangling, voice raising in snatches of holy men's hymns, and waiting for the willow to break under her. And not a one of us was going to jump in after her.

Oh, pretty Ophelia...How now, pretty lady?

silentlucidity @ 2009-10-22T17:31:00

2009-10-22T22:36:16Z

Class cancelled for friday-will resume Monday, as scheduled. If, for any reason, any one needs to get in touch with me, leave a message on the office phone. Whatever it is, it can wait until Monday morning.

silentlucidity @ 2009-10-20T19:33:00

2009-10-21T00:48:15Z

[OOC Note: Backdating for Oct 10ish.]

Sound proofing approved for next year.

Organizing a 'field trip' to a symphony. It's an overnight venture and is slotted in the beginning of December. I'm hoping I can get the request in and the approval for use of a school van. And...the funding for hotel rooms...if I can gain any student interest.

silentlucidity @ 2009-09-27T22:09:00

2009-09-28T03:17:08Z

The forms needed to complete a request for something as simple as soundproofing are giving me a migraine. One would think that an office so close to the piano room would be proofed already.

My second year guitar instructor imparted to me the belief that sometimes the simplest things are the things we so often forget.

Like the pinky finger.

Perhaps my office is a pinky finger in the music department.

Whatever.

Character Info Post

2009-09-08T03:55:49Z

Character's Name: Uchiha Itachi
Character's Age: 25
Character's Model: ( Kazuya Kamenashi ) (With some hair photoshoping in the near future)
Year in School:N/A Teacher
Major / Minor: N/A-His focus, howerver, is in teaching music and some literature.
Clubs / Activities / Job?: Job: Intro to Literature and Music Theory teacher. He also offers tutoring to his students and private lessons for the more aspiring individuals.

Background History:
Uchiha Itachi is the eldest son and heir of the main Uchiha branch. Or, was once.

His childhood had been, as far as Itachi could remember, pleasant. It had been consumed with the fire of knowledge that Itachi's father had lit underneath him and kept kindled with praise, expectation, and familial responsibility. It hadn't left the young man with much time for playing or friends-though he kept a few in his early years. What he did have was the constant, steady weight that his father pressed onto his shoulders, the unwaivering love of his mother, and the admiration of his younger brother.

It would be his brother, specifically, that haunted Itachi for many years. He had doted on his brother, loved him greatly and unconditionally-as siblings often do. Sure, there had been tussles-they were brothers-but Itachi had never felt anything less than adoration and, at times, envy for the young Sasuke who, it seemed to Itachi, had time for friends, for playing, for being a child.

As Itachi got older, his repsonsibilities got heavier and he shouldered into them with unquestioning obediance. Because it was his duty-or, atleast he felt so.

And then, as quiet and unobtrusive as the first falling leaf in autumn, came the massacre. Itachi had been home at the time and his eyes and mind had locked the incident into his psyche so vividly that, even many years later, he could recall the reflection in his mother's eyes in that last, fatal moment.

The people involved had taken him-Itachi never knew why they had, what their motivation had been,but, after a while, he didn't care. He could remember, through a blur of what he assumed to be sleeping pills, catching a snippet of the news on the television while in a hotel room about his parent's bodies being discovered.

After that, however, his contact with the outside world was cut off. He was shuttled away with these people via boat and moved into a large house in the country. Television, telephones, anything that might have allowed him to get away was taken from him. He saw little of other people during his years in that house but he was given books to keep him busy so he read. Often. And reread. His thirst for knowledge was never stiffled though he did not attend school. He taught himself a second language (which many of the books came to him in) and continued his studies in his own way-reading what he could, testing the boundaries of his confines when it was safe, teaching himself piano in the basement of the home to soothe his mind when books could not.

He was told quite early on that his brother had also been killed and he had believed that after seeing his parents murdered. He never questioned it. What reason did he have to?

Shortly after he turned 17, he was able to slip away in the night and into countryside he had lived in for years but had hardly seen. By then, the Uchiha massacre was a far away and long gone issue-no one where he was knew who or what that was.

It would make sense to him as to why in the coming days when he learned that he was in Italy-of course no one would know what he was going on about. Feeling the point was moot anyway, since his family was long gone, Itachi settled in a city and, with odd jobs backing him, put himself through college as quickly as he could manage. He CLEP'd out of what he could took what he couldn't. Literature was his predominant focus but he found that his skills at the piano were not terrible and fell quite easily into music as well.

He stuck to himself during college-not having the social skills to blend or the taste or trust for friendship that he might once have had. That isn't to say that he didn't sometimes mingle-he is and was a young man at the time, and young men tend to do what young men are want to do-but, for the most part, he stayed to himself.

At 24, after several years of hard work and over burdening course loads, Itachi graduated and found that he'd learned as much as he cared to from institutions. Italy held little more for him and he began to send out resumes for teaching positions.

He took the first job that accepted him and headed off toward places he had not seen in many, many, many years.

Personality/Likes & Dislikes:
With having had his nose stuck in a book in his early years and his person literally secluded from the outside world, it's easy to say that Uchiha Itachi is a man defined by the word 'aloof.' It isn't that he doesn't know how to deal with people-he simply has no interest or need for them. This may make him come off as a bit of a jerk but there's not even an ounce of snobbery in him-He's just curt with people to get them to leave him alone.

Itachi is a very bright, patient, and tolerant man-which lends heavily to his teaching-but does tend to get a bit snippish if forced to listen to a lot of chatter. For most of his life, his world has been very quiet. And he likes to keep it that way.

Music is, perhaps, the only rule breaker when applied to all things Itachi. He will endure, quite happily, the company of any one playing music and, if he finds a particular style pleasing enough, will even seek out that person for company if he can listen some more. He is a lover of most any kind of music and any sort of intstrument (from the complicated human voice to the simplistic, ritualized beating of drums).

Literature, his second love, follows a close second to the melody of music. It was one of the few things he was allowed in his seclusion and he finds comfort in oh so many dog eared, yellowed pages.

That being said, when those rule breakers come into play, Itachi is a very passionate man.

He does have a sense of humor, but it is usually very dry and often only amusing to himself.

But that is all outward, all visible to the people around him. One can easily understand what being spoken to curtly means or see the reverie in another person when they are hearing something lovely. But it is the things below the surface of Uchiha Itachi that really make him who he is.

Brilliant or not, Itachi is haunted. Nightmares of his parent's and brother's death find him often-reliving one, imagining the other-and leave him to wake, alone and drenched in cold sweat, in the night. He has long since accepted their deaths and, on the surface, has appeared to have moved on. He has long since escaped captors-whom Itachi never turned in because, once his blood family was gone, they became, in a gruesome way, his replacement family-and does not speak of them.

He would rather his past lay quietly in its grave, hidden in the garden he buried it in.

But he's never gotten away from any of it completely and uses his classes, his work, his publications to keep his mind constantly busy and off of the pain and his constant (and, on his part, misunderstood) loneliness.

First person writing sample:

I had, at first, been confused when my student advisor gave me a 'desk gargoyle' as a celebration gift for getting this job, but now, looking at it from the place my students will be sitting, I rather like it. It has a very hungry, inquisitive look that, I hope, might keep most people from coming into my office too often. Or, at least, make them uncomfortable enough to keep them from trying to make more conversation than is absolutely necessary.

Perhaps the man knew me just a little too well as a person.

Or feared for my students if they decided to linger too often.

Either should give me cause to stop and consider myself-and perhaps my career choice-but I'll leave the considering to my colleagues and students. I mean them no harm. I just want my office to remain a zone that is my personal territory. And quiet. Very, very quiet.

My first Music Theory class is tomorrow evening. The schedule of my office hours and the empty, for now, tutoring and private lessons spots have been posted on my door. I am hoping for a lesser turnout than the administration is since most of those lessons and the tutoring will have to take place in my office. Perhaps in the coming years, I will expand the availability of them but not until I have an actual space for it all to take place in.

An office is just too small. Even one this size.

I think I should name him-the gargoyle. He does look ready to pitch all 8 inches of his paperweighted self over the edge of the desk to devour me. I can only hope my students feel the same way.

Third person writing sample:

At first, the muffled sounds of the piano in the other room hadn't bothered the young professor. In fact, he had faintly enjoyed the fact that someone was learning to play an instrument that he very much loved and had thoughtlessly hummed along with the warm-up scales. It wasn't a complicated sound, something soothing, and it allowed him to jump right into his paperwork without having to unpack the CD's that would eventually line one of the shelves of his office. But soon, the scales faded away and tumbled into a disjointed and grating attempt at melody.

He suspected it was supposed to be Ode to Joy but he couldn't be sure with all the sour and wrong notes.

It left no room for Itachi to concentrate. He would lapse for a moment, when the player knew a measure just well enough to catch the actual tune, and tap his free hand on his desk only to cringe visibly when a wrong note was hit, sending an irritating line of ink across whatever he was working on.

Consequently, several of some rather important documents had stuttered pen slashes across them.

Dear gods, why was his office not sound proofed? All sense would dictate that it would be-musical instruments are certainly not quiet and a man needs quiet, especially in his office, to work.

He rubbed his forehead, knowing the lesson couldn't go on much longer, and tried to decide whether to stay in his office or move out to a campus bench temporarily. However, the threat of passerby chatter annoyed him more than bad musical skills. And it wasn’t something he would like to have to consider in the coming years.

And would be an impossible way to give any lessons he was contracted to do. He would be doing a disservice to his students to allow terrible Piano to shadow whatever they were trying to play.

He grunted, hand still on his forehead. Of course, as time went on, this particular player might get better or Itachi could just schedule these noisy times to be his office hours.

So he could…work…work…

He reached out to grab his desk phone and punched in the extension to the woman who had repeatedly told him, upon their initial meeting, that she was the person to call if he had any questions while settling in.

“Hello? Yes this is Uchiha Itachi-Oh, yes, yes.” He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose as the student playing the piano tried to fix their bad playing by being louder. “Wonderful, thank you… Actually, I’m calling to ask about sound proofing my office… 443?” He dropped his hand away from his face to scribble on a yellow sticky note. “Yes, thank you. I will let you know. Yes. Yes. Okay. Bye.”

For whatever the reason, that woman never seemed to want to let him off the phone. Sighing, he hung up the phone and then pulled it back to his ear so he could call the Facilities men.

From the other side of the wall, there was another series of slowed, off key notes. With some small amount of queasiness, he realized that it was definitely supposed to be Ode to Joy.

Other Notes: These are not really 'other notes.' They are simply notes-
-Itachi speaks fluent Italian.
-He is quite proficient at playing the Piano. And can play, though not as well as the piano, Guitar and Bass guitar. He can slog his way through the Violin and Clarinet if forced to.
----He can tune many instruments but knows how to actually play very few-see above.
-He loathes most poetry on principle and secretly enjoys catching theatrical productions.
-He as a desk gargoyle