those sixteen measures

"It is not surprising that in his later years variations became the favorite form for Beethoven, who knew all too well (as Tamina and I know) that there is nothing more unbearable than lacking the being we loved, those sixteen measures and the interior world of their infinitude of possibilities."

(Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)



I still believe in love but I am not sure about romantic love.


I laughed and replied, I've become less whimsical over the years.

Still in the past six months I have returned to flesh and blood. I have returned to being a person who is, at the very least, receptive to whimsy.

Even better, I can receive whimsy and decide whether to act on it, and how.


I have returned to being a person.



I do not miss you all the time, any more, which seems significant. Which is not to say that I do not miss you.


When I tell him about the dog at the shelter who stands up on her back legs and hugs me halfway through our walks, I see that it affects him. It makes me feel hope.



I am imagining two become three,
temporarily,
four pairs of hands and two tongues


To be able to lay down the guitar and step to the marimba lumina. To be able to walk softly aross the stage while your bandmates play around you, pick up your guitar again, and start to play.



On Sunday I road a lift to the top of the mountain and snowshoed three miles into the backcountry. Oh such a wide white expanse, snow above and below. Such quiet, such godliness. The entire time I was completely alone.