Mid-January Ruminations

I put on a Mozart recording, the G minor symphony, Mozart's next to last symphony; and sat staring out of the window. It had begun to rain again. I went to the window and stared down at the rivulets of water that ran down the driveway adjacent to my apartment, at the snowdrops that clustered around the roof of the tool shed just beyond the window. The music behind me: I felt an abrupt wave of happiness, richness, fecundity, as if I was in advance of the actual season outside and transported two months on into full winter. The seed was in hibernation, the days -- winter's approaching expression -- were growing shorter; though I still felt it was a selfishness, an unwarranted optimism. Perhaps it all came from the simplicities of my childhood. I needed complexity, multiple promise, endless forked roads; and simply, at this moment, felt I had them. Just as the green-gold music had, beneath the balance, the effortless development and onwardness, its shadows, so also was there a component of sadness in my happiness: I was happy because I was a solitary at heart, and that must always cripple me as a human being.