Gymnopedie No X

I was writing the last post, when i put on Satie and suddenly everything i was writing was WRONG. Right but wrong, because i did not do justice to the things which the Satie piece threw light on. Like the wonderful weather we have had. Sunlight, frost, no wind and eggshell. Both fragile and tender and unarguably there.

It has been a Christmas of truces. A Christmas of miracles. My new nephew, full name now Alexander Edward Chua Ching Yang. A Christmas of snows. At Galgorm yesterday we stepped into another world. It's Narnia, Oisin said. Just up the road from Belfast in Cullybackey, and the snow had fallen and never melted. Old fashioned street lamps, huge statues of boars and lions, Ceres and Venus, all festooned with cobwebs that had been studded with the most fantastic strings of ice. Each one a wintery world of its own which we could have all gotten lost in.

And even today, the sun throws its clear light in the kitchen wall and i think i just want to empty this house of everything. I just want what is necessary. Like the hazy square of light on my wall which illuminates all mysteries and is all mysteries with its pale gold presence.

I want this year to be the year i get the house in order. This house. I'm not going to do too much, try not to do too much, but do what i need to beautifully.

Play the piano again. Do the garden so that it is beautiful and peaceful. Return order to the house. Probably turn the study into Ghin's bedroom so that both boys have a place each. Don't know what we'll do for a guest room then. Not have guests perhaps. Give away old toys and throw/recycle old ones.

Put my money where my mouth is and live a life that is local and loving.

I have made my peace with my own narrative around this person whose return had troubled me. I have understood what i needed to understand to get on with things. And in this aspect i think getting on will be the operative word. Perhaps in a year's time i can do a bit more than simply get on.

I can't understand how a human being could compose something like Gymnopedie. It's a musical equivalent of painting with the elements. If you could, this is how it would sound like.

As the light returns again, it is good to feel this way. It is good to have hope. As the light returns, we return to - to our dreams, our hopes, our possibilities, despite all the shattered glass and the melted snow, despite all the disappointments and bruises, we return - because we cannot but do this, for it is our resilience, our ability to endure, our love that makes us human.

And that's what we need to be - no more and no less than human. That is our art.