After returning home and shoveling the front walks, I indulged in a short nap in the chair in our library. Awake, I hunted in the CD cabinet in our living room and found the recording I had seen earlier in the week, a 1951 recording of La Bohème that I had not listened to in a long time. Nineteenth-century Paris in the language of Puccini – it fit the week I had just finished.
Through the wooden blinds the late afternoon snow created a light in the living room that I could not violate with a lamp. Bohemian Paris in the winter of 1830 demanded an appropriate setting. A votive candle, maybe. One cat settled on the folded blanket on the sofa back behind me; the other settled at my feet.
The mood in the room for the next two hours was gentle, sentimental, reflective, lyrical. Solitary and tender, the experience fed my heart, fed my dreams.
Photo of London CD of La Bohème with Renata Tebaldi
2 comments:
Friend,
Though it has been but weeks, it feels so long since we have written! I missed reading you. There are those times when other things intervene...
What a picture of deep comfort your description inks... I have described that feeling as one of having a low center of gravity...keenly aware of being a part of what is around, grounded but able to be let go without getting lost. It is a pleasure reserved for those places where we are at home, I think. Where we are in our element and can say, even with the inevitable hiccups and convolutions, that "hope does not disappoint us."
Enjoy...enjoy....
Yes, being grounded was a strong element of that Friday afternoon experience. Ready for surprises while expecting none, I could let home be home. I could let the room briefly take its flavor from what I had brought together for an hour or two of delight.
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