He also included this passage from the book Guarding Hanna, which talks about people hearing bach's music and being moved to tears. . . ". . . although the works of Bach were still available to us, a crucial element was missing: the silences of daily life that bracketed the rare moments of music. In his opinion, only by hearing the work rise grandly from an ocean of quotidian quietude could its full impact be felt. And so, though we could reproduce the notes, we could never reproduce the circumstances that made the work great. Who among us, after all, goes even a day [^] much less a week [^] with only the sounds of nature and the artless, commonplace din of daily life?"

Just another example of the wonders to be found among the blogs.
4:52:07 PM    Comments?()  

I was sitting at a traffic light, waiting for it to change. A line of cars turned left in front of me. Suddenly I was seeing, not cars, but drivers and not drivers but individuals with lives inside. It was as though I suddenly encountered a long dead favorite uncle rounding the corner, intent on life and not yet seeing me approach. The drivers were by themselves and had nothing to be but themselves.

The idea that we are all individuals and unique is neither new nor profound. So why was I moved beyond belief with this connection? I think, for a moment, I got a glimpse of the "I" inside of "I", of whatever it is that lives in and directs the meat we inhabit on this plane of existence.

I like to imagine there is an oval ring of unknowable size. This ring is pure energy, light, love. Not exactly God, but precisely so. You can, in a metaphorical sense, step up to this ring and grab ahold, becoming one with the energy and one with everyone else holding on at the same time. You become connected. In this life, we can, at best, catch a glimpse of the power, but the pain and aloneness we all feel is the result of being separated from that ring and all who are part of it. All of life is a search for ways to connect and feel that larger love that binds our souls. Well. New Age hokum? Heresy and sacrilege? Trite, fuzzy theology? All of those and more, probably. But it feels true in the best way I can explain it. The feeling is long since gone. I remember it in an intellectual sense, but I am left with my own, usual and frequent sense of isolation and impatience and self-pity. Yet, for an unexplainable moment, I felt and knew that there is so much more than we can comprehend or even imagine. I felt for a moment that you and she and he and I are all a part of the same thing, all longing for the same connectedness, all of us trying to get back to where we came from without having a clue where that is.

I don't know if any of this makes sense or whether it is trite beyond belief or simply boring. My dearest friend says that I'm moving into the house of Pisces(?) and this sort of thing will become more frequent. I hope so, 'cause it's better than anything I've got going right now. But the next time you're in the car, stopped at a light, take a look at the open, unguarded, beautiful faces of those around and see if you recognize the simple humanity that we share.
8:31:16 AM    Comments?()