Moonlight Sonata

I was listening to a renowned artist playing Moonlight Sonata on my CD player when Annie remarked that the classical piece sounded too creepy for her.

I looked at her, astonished. By way of explanation she said she had heard the sonata the first time in a movie where a man had been calmly playing it on his piano while the whole house had been on fire all around him. Creepy indeed.

For me, the music invariably brings me back to those childhood days when lying in my bed, looking out of my window at the moon casting its pale light into the cold darkness, I was listening to my older brother playing the mesmerizing piece in the next room and feeling awed at its unspeakable beauty. The memory has always been among my most cherished ones.

And so I realized that the way we feel about something often depends on what we associate it with and not necessarily on its own quality. Each individual mind has its own lenses to view the world with, which makes the world both rich and troublesome.

Now whenever I listen to Moonlight Sonata, I know that I am blessed being able to enjoy it. In fact, I am blessed being able to enjoy anything.

All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

On the radio a country singer started crooning about being all dressed up with no place to go. I smiled weakly, for I caught a glimpse of myself in the song.

Sometimes it happened that on a Friday evening, from force of habit I dressed up only to realize that there was no one to see and nowhere to go. A subsequent aimless cruise through busy streets, a dinner for one, browsing through the bookshelves at Borders, all helped me pass the time but also sharply accentuated my solitariness. Yes, I might look nice and turn a couple of heads, but what good did it do for me?

A fat lot of good could my other qualities, whatever they might be, do me either. For without that special someone to share my life, I was just a guy all dressed up with nowhere to go.