Feeling Positive

1/13/18

I go to an old junk store in Croton-Harmon.

 I find an old Heckle bassoon which has been made into a lamp.

I buy it for $175, take it to a woodwind repairman who puts it into working condition.

Then I take it to a shop originally owned by the bassoon repairman of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Although it usually takes weeks or months to get an appointment, the new owner is intrigued by the lamp story.

On the train, I imagine the bassoon being gently nursed back to health and growing into a great forest of bassoons then all of them powerfully playing scales and arpeggios in unison and then solos and duets from Britten’s A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. This is interrupted by his War Requiem accompanied by a defibrillator-like shock to the bassoon and me.

My life’s history of humiliations passes in front of my eyes.

Then I hear Danny saying he is more and more proud to be my son.

I think of but do not say anything negative about myself. 

I have come to feel it is more important to have and stay with positive feelings, relating and seeing the world through a clearer lens.