Day 21: a.k.a. Three Weeks

HaydnCD21You know the old saying that times flies when you’re having fun?

Well, it’s not true.

Time flies whether you’re having fun or not, usually when you’re busy as hell and it becomes, as the late MacDonald Carey used to say at the start of each Days of Our Lives episode, “like sands through the hourglass.”

The older we get, the more those sands fall to the bottom of said hourglass.

I type that because three weeks have already passed since I started this three-year project. I have no idea where those 21 days went. Tell you what, though, if I could stick my finger in that little narrow tube between the top of the hourglass and its bottom I most definitely would. (Hmm, the words “stick my finger in” and “its bottom” in the same sentence don’t necessarily enhance the appeal of this morning’s Asiago bagel. But you know what I mean. )

Symphony No. 70 in D is another delightful composition, one that grabbed me from Continue reading

Day 20: Eavesdropping

HaydnCD20Sometimes, being at Panera in the morning is a lesson in trying – hard! – to mind ones own business.

Like this morning for example. There’s a man and a younger woman (a dad and his daughter, I quickly discovered) sitting in the booth behind me who are deep in conversation of a serious nature. “The irony is,” the man just said, “that’s not who I am…wearing the right suit, saying the right thing at the board meeting…”

I don’t know who he tried to be, or what he wants to be. But it’s clear he’s not being what he thinks he is.

I’ve found that to be true with most people these days.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation,” Thoreau wrote in Walden (1854). (Note that he did not write: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation…” That’s a misquote, according to the Thoreau web site. Plus, the quote did not come from Civil Disobedience and Other Essays. That is another mis-attribution. Oh, the things I learn…)

Whatever the exact quote, or its precise source, I think not being what one is is one of the great tragedies of human existence. I wonder if Haydn ever thought to himself, Continue reading