agitation / peace

i'm not always the smartest duck in the pond.... but it's good to have people around (albeit 1,253 miles away) that can push me in a different direction every now and then.

i've been super agitated tonight. i'm not sure why. as the hours passed tonight, i was getting more and more agitated, jumpy, crabby. i have no idea.

certainly, i don't think my knee is helping things. i'm still very mobility-limited. while i've gone into the office the last two days, i haven't really been out and about much. my knee is hurting more, the vicodin is just masking the pain. i'm not sleeping well and i can't get physically comfortable.

earlier, i was on the phone with cb and he pretty much had to talk me off the ledge so to speak. when i get agitated, the nervous energy just multiplies like bunnies and it feeds the demon which only serves to get me more jumpy. cb was fairly adamant that i needed to take some pain pills and lie down, or read, or - here's an idea, listen to music, to calm my center.

music is the my favorite thing in the world, virtually my one constant, but do you think i thought of that? nope. i just sat pacing (as best as a gimp can pace). cb reminded me about a piece of music i own (thanks to him) he knows how i love it, and how it has a calming effect on me.

so i took an hour out of my night, turned off the lights, lit a candle and listened to jonathan elias' the prayer cycle. i'm almost a differen man!

combining such divergent voices as nusrat fateh ali kahn, alanis morissette, ofra haza, linda ronstadt and perry farrell (to name just a few) with the american boy choir (featuring the staggeringly amazing devin provenzano) and the english chamber orchestra and chorus - the work evokes (for me) the combined one-ness of the greater global community.

elias wrote the piece (a choral symphony in 9 movements) just before the turn of the century, and in his words: "...the world we live in is both joyous and cruel. the divide between love and hate has never been as wide as it is on our world today. i pray that we can move forward and that the next generations rise where we have fallen."

i find it interesting that he chose to take music from all over the globe, in combination with voices that are at equally divergent (i count voices singing in 15 different languages) - and yet, what came out was one cohesive sound. it also seems relevant (or at the very least interesting) that 7 years on from the millennial change, the world is even more at odds - and yet, when one listens to music that was created with a true sense of purpose, and are taken on a journey to the far points of the globe, your left feeling more connected to the world around you than when you started.

so here i sit, listening to the piece for the third time tonight, and i'm calmer, more at peace (at least for the moment). yes, landry, i do need to figure out the source of my agitation, but sometimes just getting lost in another world for a bit of time can make all the difference in both the long and short run.

there you have it, prodded a bit by a good friend to just sit down and be in the moment - it's a nice little reminder now and then. especially for the densest duck in the pond.