sleep

So with much noise and activity N. made dinner (very good) and we ate and were laughing and laughing. I had put on Bach cantatas with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson--such a voice!--and had to stop eating so many times just to listen. Then the Bach was too much for me and I had to shut it off. And then we played music; writing a song, Y. playing guitar, piano for me, singing and drumming for N., and then listening to Nina Simone. I went out to walk Mabel. It had not yet begun to rain so she was happy to trot up the street and sniff at the odd bits of trash on the ground. Wet paper is her top choice. Then I went back inside and felt as if, were I a balloon, I had just been deflated. All the intense energy that had filled me for the day vanished in a puff and I could barely keep my head from falling on the ground. And so I went into the bedroom. I shut the hall door and the bedroom door to cut off the light and the music and the voices, and I got into bed and I took my trazodone and I put the pillow over my head and with my Tuna lying next to me purring I fell asleep.

Of course, the sleep did not last--I can't sleep through the night--and there I was, 1:45 am, standing in my kitchen in the dark, watching the time and temperature alternate, glowing in the dark, courtesy of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

And I kept thinking about Bach. To me Bach's music is as sublime as anything I could ever imagine. It is technically perfect, but then so is Mozart's and still Mozart to me never sounds nearly so human as Bach's. How can it be so wrenchingly beautiful, so joyful, so sad, so alive, and so perfect too?