KateThoughts

The Music Sanctuary

I have my own room now. I've mentioned it on FB, but I don't think I've shown you here...and it is spectacular! Here are some shots of it.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

(each is clickable for a larger view)

The first image will give you a general feel for the room. The chair is now a little farther back into the corner. I removed a closet door and replaced it with curtains to make space. The painting is one done by my Aunt Conny, and there is a piece of my step-Mom's crochet on the lamp. The window now has curtains, too; blue, of course. That black & brown unit under the guitars is a humidifier.

The second one is there to show you a sense of the 'sanctuary' part. I do my morning meditations and some Pilates in here, too.But the wall has changed. I lowered the little shelf unit and added a junk store treasure.

The third shot shows off that little treasure. The fourth shot is detail of the piano part.
Please notice the wonderful ribbon I found to hang it with; it's music staff ribbon with a real antique look. This room makes me smile; whether I'm in it or not is not relevant to the feeling.

And now, for your listening pleasure (or tolerance) is some more stuff. I'm still working on getting volume levels right.

This first one is Tradd and me playing Dust in the Wind, by Kansas:

Next is this one of me playing with Sting on Fields of Gold, by way of YouTube and the computer (which is one of the reasons there is a computer in the room).

 

And lastly, is a Reggae Improv with Tradd. Just learning different rhythms.

 

Thanks for listening (if you did). And thanks for all the great things some of you have said. I can NOT possibly tell you how much fun this is. I've begun playing some with a friend who sings sometimes at Karaoke. We used to have places with Open Mic Nights, but the last one closed up a few weeks ago. I guess I'll start holding some kind of jam sessions in the den now & then. Anyway, it is wonderful fun and closer to passion than I have been in years!

Judgment v Judgment: when is it the right thing? Or, How to ruin a perfectly good Saturday night.

This is today's quote from Abraham, who I have mentioned here before:

"Physical man gets into an uncomfortable place when he concludes, "I and those like me have come to the right decisions, and everybody that's living outside of these right decisions is wrong." And then he spends his life pushing against all those "wrong" decisions and cutting himself off from the Life Force that would help him have joy in his, what he concludes to be, right decisions. There is no one right path. There are endless paths, and the differences in the paths are what make them more and more, and more, perfect. The same old path no longer serves."

--- Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Orlando, FL on Saturday, February 3rd, 2001 # 731

(These daily quotes also appear each day in my top left sidebar of this blog.)

It is a second look, this morning, at some of my own worst behavior; the first recent look being Saturday night when I went to a small restaurant to listen to Karaoke. It involves my observation of others who carried take-out food into the restaurant and proceeded to eat it, and put all the trash in the restaurant bins.

No one else seemed to have a problem with this - certainly not the restaurant - because I learned that this is common for these particular individuals.

But it flashed all over me like a heat wave. I could feel myelf getting literally & physically hotter; labels leaped to my mind: disgusting, cheap, low class (there's a telling one), thoughtless, lousy upbringing, selfish...

And, as you might imagine, I have a love/hate relationship with these sorts of insights!
Even in the moment, I knew the thoughts and the emotion were all mine. I was actually angry about it. And I could feel all this effect the way I listened to a few more singers. Frankly, I could hardly get out of there fast enough.

I've know for a long long time that my rearing was a tad on the fundamental/judgmental/black & white  side. But I am now seeing that the results of those attitudes are entirely mine; they effect no one but me...unless I inflict my (narrow) opinions on my tablemates. And I must also confess that I did a little of that, too.  GROAN    ....or as Laura would type: Aaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhh!

Certain judgments are appropriate, of course. I usually make a distinction by calling those decisions 'discernment'. Things like where I donate my time or money; people I choose to become close to; books; philosophies.. and simple things such as whether to cook a nice meal or head out for pizza and beer.

I spent way too much of last Saturday, though, engaged in a behavior that cut me off from Source and stole all the joy from my evening. I did it. I'm STILL holding on to too much old stuff.
"Uncomfortable"; you bet! "Pushing against", ditto.  ...lord, have mercy!

Will I do it again?     ...probably.
But, almost certainly, I'll do it a little less often with less strong implications for my immediate happiness, and with a much quicker return to my center - my connection to Source. And that's because I really am connected a lot of the time. It's why I'm here afterall: to explore the potential of this relationship between myself and Source, and to bring my heart & my behavior into closer and closer virbrtional alignment until there is no space between us anymore.