June 1, 2011

Outside, a unbearably pleasant wind is blowing. From time to time it can be felt also inside the apartment. I am sitting at my regular sofa-corner, surrounded by pillows, a green mechanical pencil held in my hand, and with it I write on the topmost page of a loose bunch of papers which are placed against my leg on one of the sofa’s pillows – my favorite one due to its smaller, more compact size and practical trapeze shape – against the hard cover score of Mussorgski’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” that serve now at a portable writing surface. This is one of the positions which I fondly call “Nirvana Positions” – one in which it is possible to stay for a long time. But already now, after writing less than a half of a page, I am forced to change the position of my legs and already feel a weak muscular pain sneaking into the pinkie of my writing right hand, surprisingly.

Not too long ago, about a week or so, while sitting here at the same sofa corner, I experienced a feeling of wonderful balance, as I was situated amongst the objects which accompany my life, and I made up my mind to describe soon in detail the living room of my current apartment in Boston, situated close to Symphony Hall and the New England Conservatory where I studied from 1993 and have been teaching, for its Preparatory School and School of Continuing Education, since 1996.

Outside, distance thunders thunder, rolling in the uproar of their non-evil violence, as if angry on this world underneath which refuses to be cleaned by the rain they throw at. Against them, a lonely car alarm defies, and now it has stopped. Still the thunders continue to patrol the heavens, shattering as sea waves against the wall of human existence. An intimate line stretches now from my seat here at the sofa’s corner, through the wind which so pleasantly washes into the apartment and the rain pouring outside, and all the way to these distance thunders, echoing in a wonderful symphony of ferocious timpani drums.

Now, while I write, the thunders turned into a massive thunderstorm. They smash in horrific ear-deafening volume. The rain outside is raging and the wind grow stronger as well. I continue to seat here and write, filled with awe in the presence of the forces of Nature.