Saturday, January 4, 2014

A Reflection

On November 3, 2013 Carol and I attended yet another performance of Symphony Pro Musica.

An immensely talented orchestra with whom my brother performs percussion. My chest swells every time we attend these things and I bask in the glow of exactly what it is Eddie is accomplishing here.

The talent on that stage at each performance is collectively more than most people get to experience in 9 lifetimes.

I am always overwhelmed.

Glorious.

There is always a featured artist or artists. Supremely gifted and hardworking people. Artists who exist in a different universe.

On November 3, 2013 the featured artist was Adrian Anantawan, a virtuoso violinist, otherwise known as a VV in the trade.

He has one hand. One goddamn hand. He straps the bow to his arm with a custom made contraption and proceeds to blow the audience away. He saws away at that thing like no one you have ever seen. Furiously fast, delicately soft, expressing emotion with an intensity that transcends a human capability to do so. His violin feels and expresses more than the human heart does.

With one hand. One goddamn hand.

The calendar was approaching year end and I was beginning to slip into the annual melancholia.

I felt guilty.

Blue hairs attend these events. It is a given that when you attend a classical performance the average age of the audience will be 77.

This is a sad commentary. This is beautiful stuff. Maybe that is the message. Maybe you have to achieve a certain age and wisdom before you can appreciate it.

I would prefer to believe this is not true because, if so, a lot of hearts will continue to miss out on exquisite emotion.

After the show I watched a woman helping her mom up the stairs towards the exit. Mom was feisty, moving slow but refusing help. The daughter was frustrated and carrying the walker.

The melancholia got thinner.

I turned to my right and saw a woman in a wheel chair. The kind you use a breathing tube to move around. This woman was my age or younger.

I really felt shaky after that.

Later in the week I was in a local grocery store and ran into an old acquaintance, a guy I rarely see. A guy whose daughter was diagnosed with cancer decades ago, a girl who went to school with my sons. Some doctors, a doctor, had written her off.

She is doing fine today.

This guy's wife was recently diagnosed with brain cancer and has been battling enormously over the last couple of years. When I asked how she is doing he said "today is a good day."

He asked where I am working and I proceeded to tell him how much I hate my job. He said "Joe, everybody hates their job. At least it is a job."

Again, within that context I felt small.

Shortly thereafter Dr. Feelgood diagnosed high blood pressure in my invincible body. Threw me for a loop. I blamed it on my fucking job, which to a large extent is true.

But would the job have pushed me over the BP brink had I not consumed thousands of gallons of whiskey over the years? What if I exercised more and ate better over the last couple of decades? What if I took charge of my life decades ago so I never ended up in this position in the first place?

Pinched nerve in the neck. Snuck up on me but there were warning signs. However, right now, I am in constant pain and exhausted from sleepless nights.

The BP and pinched nerve caught me off guard. I felt invincible prior to these two pains in my ass.

Now I feel vulnerable. Instantaneously vulnerable.

Then there was the birthday realization that my friends and family see me as an ultra negative guy. I always believed I balanced the "negative" thing out with a quirky sense of humor.

Apparently not.

Who knew?

But I am looking at my situation through eyes that were wide open to see a one handed virtuoso violinist, a defiant woman with a walker, a woman in a breath-powered wheelchair, an old acquaintance with a daughter and a wife diagnosed with cancer.

It is January 4, 2014 and already the feeling has faded. The exciting new year ripe with possibilities feeling.

That is because I worked on 1/02 and1/03, and will work on 1/04 and1/05. Nothing has changed there. Everything is vacuously the same.

Dangerously predictable.

This is what crushes the spirit of change.

But I cannot get away from those impressions and how they rub up against my view of my life, leaving me feeling weak, unfocused, and selfish.

That stuff got into my soul because my soul made room for it.

My soul is tired of my bullshit.

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