My hands are cold, as are my feet. I have not had to rely on my cane so far this morning, but if my feet get any colder, I may watch them crack into icy pieces of flesh-colored glass.
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Rāga, a melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music, is central to classical Indian music. Each rāga consists of an array of melodic structures with musical motifs; and, from the perspective of the Indian tradition, the resulting music has the ability to “colour the mind” as it engages the emotions of the audience. [extracted and adapted from Wikipedia].
After trying, without success, to identify an appealing and freely available film or series to watch last night, I took temporary charge of the television’s Amazon Music control. In short order, I picked an album on which two (apparent) brothers played rāgas on sitar. My efforts to comprehend the structure and purpose of rāgas were wasted, in the same way my past efforts to understand traditional Western music have left me dazed and confused. That bewilderment notwithstanding, I enjoy listening to both. Later in the evening, I stumbled on an album cover printed entirely in either Japanese Hiragana, Katakana, and/or Kanji; some of it could have been Korean text…I remain embarrassed not to know. That album featured a lone acoustic guitarist. This morning, after trying for a full hour to find the music I heard last night, I gave up. Something is awry. And it could be me. Both albums, as different as they are to my usual musical preferences, were pleasing—relaxing and evocative of some sort of serene confusion. I want to find the albums again, but I do not wish for my search to have any urgency—somehow, that would defeat the purpose.
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Finally, a few days after becoming aware that the controls for the fireplace no longer worked, a guy came out yesterday to service them. The sentence I just wrote could be interpreted to mean the guy who came out to service the fireplace controls had, a few days earlier, become aware they no longer worked. That is not what I meant to write, but I typed it anyway. My mind seems, some days, to be encased in a fog just thick enough to make the expressions of my thoughts incomprehensible. Perhaps even thicker that “just…enough.” I imagine that the empty spaces between brain cells are filled with a gelatinous goo that gets firmer and firmer as it sets. And, as it sets, it encases my thoughts in an indestructible rubbery substance that—like a monstrously strong bio-adhesive— adheres to the inside of my head. That’s the downside of the fog, but the fireplace works.
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The founder of an association management company in Chicago for which I worked must have been in his mid-eighties when I left the job around 1988 or 1989. In my dream last night, he had not aged since then. But the company had grown enormously and had launched a respected public relations agency arm. A splinter group of a construction industry client association were trying to withdraw from my employer’s management by making untrue accusation about the company. The founder of the company learned of their bad deeds; he and I paid them a visit, along with several of my colleagues, during which he put on boxing gloves and beat the liars senseless. After giving them a physical pounding, the founder summoned his PR staff and instructed them to ruin each member of the splinter group, individually. The last I remember of the dream, I was wading through chest-high grass while trying to find my way back to downtown Chicago.
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Comfort is far more important than money.
