Something about my situation as it is, blocks me. It seems to be all a waiting game. I start chemo tomorrow. Last night, my life was dominated by controlling the ostomy bag. The bags the home care nurses keep giving me never last---lots of pressure to hold them together when I think it should be easier. I get a new one today; hopefully there will be some improvement.
All the problems began in the late afternoon. Before that I had listened to a performance of Don Giovanni from Covent Garden's opera house, and on you tube, Daniel Barenboim playing Beethoven's fourth piano sonata, opus 7. The sonata is the first long sonata that Beethoven wrote---it's second movement is complicated, challenging to listen to---full of slow ideas operating off each other. In other words: a marvel. Really hard to concentrate on this movement as it goes through its starts and stops. The third movement's first moment is super lighthearted in comparison with the second. Barenboim understood the transition brilliantly--those moments were played so sprightly---as if to wash out the darkness of the second movement. For a moment I felt a true sense of excitement--a great sense of satisfaction that I understood the meaning of that transition.
In the early afternoon, came the Don Giovanni production. I know the opera by heart, but I was still really stimulated listening to the first act progress. The depth of the music and its ability to create real characters for the opera is amazing. To think, the first time I saw a production of the opera was in February of 66. At the Met, with Siepi, Evans, Lorengar, Rosenstock conducting. That morning I had what was to be the first of my four army physicals--when it was over and I had been rejected---that was the whole point--I celebrated first by going to Luigino's, a wonderful Italian restaurant on west 48 street, and then to the opera. I don't remember if I returned to my apartment, then on 94th street, after the meal---maybe I went straight to the opera house ane joined the standing room line. I was to see this production at least one more time that year---I absorbed it more then anything else. That was, of course, the last spring at the Old Met, and I was on that standing room line, many times. This was the beginning of my "infatuation with opera" phase.
This morning, despite fear that the bag might not hold while I was out, I did go to the food truck on Broadway and 78th. The bag held---I got a coffee and pound cake---my stomach is now fighting to absorb it---will not go out for a while. Good to write again---shall report soon.
