Farewell to April

Tonight is the last night of what has been a most extraordinary month. Certainly the most varied of the last two years and equally, most groundbreaking on many levels, most of which is documented in this blog. Before turning to May, a quick look back.

 

• Taught kids at the Children’s Day School

• Played piano at the Jewish Home of the Aged and Mercy Housing.

• Read excerpts from my new book to the kids at the SF School.

• Watched the rough cut of a film about my work that has been 2 ½ years in the making.

• Watched the above with my wife, daughters, son-in-law and grandkids.

• Had my 2-years-deferred retirement party with music, slides and my farewell speech. 

• Went from i-Phone 6 to 13 and closed out our faithful landline.

• Went to a movie theater (to see CODA)

• Went to a David Whyte poetry retreat.

• Flew across the ocean and got my passport stamped for the first time in two years. 

• Spent three delightful days in Lecce, Italy with my wife and a friend.

• Rode six days through Puglia, each day like a small lifetime in itself. 

 

Why should anyone —you, the reader, for example— care about this? It’s simple— you shouldn’t. But if any universal thought can be plucked from these details, it’s simply these two truths:

 

1) The brain thrives on repetition. My sheltered life of routines ranging from piano practice to writing to cooking to walking in the park to jigsaw puzzles had its own pleasure in the rhythm and the routine.

 

2) The brain thrives on novelty. This month of varied activity in different places with different people has created a different sense of time and offered multiple delights, new notes in familiar songs.

I love both the routine and the novelty. 

 

Let us see what May will bring. Hares and rabbit.