Monday, January 8, 2018

Turning 80! Oh! Not me, yet.

As I write this, I am listening to “A Te, O Cara,” from the opera “I Puritani” by Bellini. It is one of my favorite selections of all Operas, with the possible exception of Puccini’s “O Soave Fanciulla” in La Boheme.

Having said that and the fact that this post has nothing to do with the music I am listening to, but everything to do with the generation of comfort, I suppose they are minutely and mystically connected.

I recently returned from a gathering of elders and almost elders celebrating the 80th birthday of a mutual friend.

I looked around the long table of aging friends and felt privileged being in their company for they are all successful and accomplished gentlemen either active or retired in their chosen professions.

It mattered not that we were all friends from previous outings and experiences. At the moment of dining and libation, we were all equal colleagues and acquaintances joyfully celebrating a singular and unique moment in another’s life.

My mind moved to what some mystics call “the sacred moment of being,” and I rejoiced at the moment, the feeling of freedom, the wonder of expectation and the knowing that connection is instantaneous and fleeting in this density and time, but eternal elsewhere.

I will see these souls again here, if that is given to me to experience and if not here somewhere else in the eternity of being. Trying to fathom that moment in a restaurant bar with glasses clanking and dishes rattling, and ambient laughter is at best awkward, but possible if one genuinely lives in the moment.

No comments:

 
Free Blog CounterEnglish German Translation