[jamesn.]

Nice one Stephen; for some reason I woke up and saw this right after you posted it. I’ve been thinking a lot lately how much our idea of normalcy has changed since Covid came into play; (reading through some of our earlier exchanges seems to confirm this feeling). I can’t quite put my finger on it but there seems to be an extra hyper awareness of life’s fragility accompanied by a loss of control because of Covid’s ability to change leaving life’s promise of tomorrow somewhat more in question than usual. We are taught as children that life has limitations on certainty; and we contemplate these kinds of things constantly as we navigate our fortunes in a delicate dance between chance and time; so whatever gifts we receive from the muses are gratefully acknowledged. Here is a quote I remember Joseph repeated once; (although I can’t quite remember where); from the the Greek poet Pindar I think concerning the Olympics: “Odes for Victorious Athletes”

“Creatures of a day what is any one? What is he not? Man is but a shadow. Yet when there comes as a gift of heaven a gleam of sunshine, there rest upon men a radiant light aye, a gentle life.”

So I went back to sleep and immediately another thought kept surfacing surrounding the word “Raga”. So upon waking again I went and looked up various sources and definitions and came upon this one concerning: “Coloring one’s thoughts”. And what struck me about this co-incidence was the connection of a timeless Indian art form to a modern western application and the time and place in which this occurred. You may recall some of this material after reading the piece.