Layers

Whatever is entrusted to you for any portion in life, care for it with great abandon. Only then will you have no regrets.

I say that to myself every once in awhile, knowing that life and the gifts therein are vapor.

Today, Joel and Nancy drove me all the way to the southern part of Massachussetts to hear an afternoon concert by a musician friend, Paul. The art hall in Marion is a hidden secret, and from what Paul told us, the residents there want to keep it that way. It's country living. Big yards, narrow roads, modest homes. And trees or fields to decorate every part of your view.

Life there seems detached from the world. Slower, calmer. The world is simply accepted. No fighting with it. Just a look out over the lake and a day in the yard will satify today. And tomorrow, too.

Most of the people at the concert were senior citizens dressed in beyond their Sunday best. The orchestra included accomplished musicians from around the country. The program included:

• Mozart, Divertimento No. 2 in D. Mozart wrote this when he was a mere teenager.
• Handel, Suite from The Water Music
• Borodin, Nocturne
• Bizet, Symphony in C Major

I don't know what it is about orchestral music. Every time I go into a concert hall and the lights dim and the strings resonate through space, I suddenly shed many layers of consciousness. I'm not certain if it's the types of vibrations the music makes or the actual content of the music itself, but I always feel so raw in the middle of a concert. All rational thinking sheds from my existence and gives way to what's left - pure feelings. It is then that I feel great happiness, then great sadness, then great anger, and the range in between. They are feelings I've accumulated through the years, hidden somewhere.

I am naked in the dark. I am wildly sensitive to who I really am.

The concert ends and hall lights hit my skin once more, followed by lobby chatter and parking lot motors.


Posted by ruth at July 14, 2002 05:36 PM