the language of a certain heart

(i've written bits about this before, but i still don't quite have it in my minds grip.)

i'm listening to Beethoven's Piano Sonato No. 30 in E Major (particularly the third movement) and i'm imagining him with the legs sawn off a piano and his face pressed to the same ground as the piano sits. "beethoven wasn't born deaf"

it's so beautiful it almost hurts my heart. how deeply beethoven must have felt. what must it have been like to have borne these notes in his heart - so simple, so pure and so poignant.

real music is such a mysterious and profoundly beautiful thing in my ears. i don't even fully understand it. i can only say that when i really hear it, when it really pierces beyond my thoughts to unconscious, it grabs me. and i feel it.

what a gift, music is. what a gift is the ability to experience it. there is nothing else like it.

the things we inherit

one time i was talking to a dear friend about the different faults we find in ourselves and how we like to blame our parents for them. and, to a degree, rightly so. we "inherit" baggage from our parents in one way or another and there's little we can do about it besides accept it and try to play with the hand we've been dealt.

but then, he added something that has stuck with me. he noticed how he focused so much on the bad cards in his hand that he was at risk of missing the very good cards he held too. the things we "inherit" from our parents aren't exclusively negative (and for some people it should be pointed out that they're not exclusively positive either... everyone's imperfect). in fact, there are some things that my parents gave me that i've come to value and be grateful for.

i inherited a tendency to always wonder why from my dad.
i inherited an ability to feel things deeply from my mom.
i inherited a mistrust of inauthenticity from them both.
i inherited a value of physical health from my mom.
i inherited my sense of humor from my dad.
i inherited intelligence from both of them.

if it weren't for my parents (humor me on this one... i mean without my parents i'd obviously have never been born, but that's not the point) i wouldn't have a tendency to self-doubt, focus on negativity, mistrust people, etc., but i also wouldn't have become who i am that is so much more than self-doubt, negativity, and mistrust.

what it feels like

the funny thing about life is, unless you live it, you never really know.

you can hear a thousand times a story told,

but you never really know what it feels like.

some of the things you would never want to feel

you don't know a mistake until you've made one,

until you've carried the weight of remorse in your heart,

until you collapse beneath it.

you don't really know the bottom until you've hit it,

until gravity has held you captive there,

and your strength is not enough.

you don't really know love until you've fallen in it,

thrown caution to the overwhelming windstorm,

until you can't imagine life any more complete.

you never know beauty until you behold it,
until you've felt the utter inability to think or speak,
and it beholds you,

you never really know life until you live it.

and so the only life you can ever know is your own.

and that's a beautiful truth.

(live your life. feel it all the way through. you are the only one who can.)