Nietzsche Was Right

 A full and fun day of teaching some 80 teachers in Beijing.  Always a little like teaching with gloves on working with a translator, but luckily, the activities themselves require very little verbal directions, at least the way that I teach them. And it’s interesting to tell a joke and get the delayed response laugh.

Jet lag still with me and will be for another day or so, but I’m forcing myself to stay up and after teaching from 9:00 to 4:30, had the good sense to go out for a short walk in the brisk winter air. Not a particularly inspiring neighborhood, but just good to be out in the world, stepping out of my self-enclosed little hotel-room world of my books, cards and limited computer access (just e-mail and Skype).

But here I am again and had the good sense to plug in my fancy phones and listen to Bach’s Orchestral Suite while writing a few e-mails. And isn’t it remarkable how organized vibrations of tones can completely change the feeling in the room and redefine the moment as something to be endured and gotten through to something that  is to be wholly savored and enjoyed and felt as something far beyond the ticking clock, a larger presence that wraps you in its arms and lets you know that nothing more is needed. This is the life you’ve longed for, right here, right now, the one you deserve and the one you now have.

Yes, indeed, Nietzche got it right.

“Without music, life would be an error.”

And so I ride into February on the wings of Bach. On we go!

(Feb. 1)