Early Thursday morning I was woken up by the screams of a neighbor who is mentally and emotionally unstable. This happens to her every so many months. She then dutifully apologizes. I eventually composed myself and quickly fell back asleep. Suddenly I was snapped out of a horrible dream in which I was stuck in Alex Garland’s new “Civil War” movie. I was jolted awake again – this time by some bad 1980s pop music hit that the maintenance worker was blaring on his radio as he painted the apartment next door. The song was by some forgettable female singer and was about love lost, yearning and the pain of heartbreak. I remembered that song from when it was first released. I was in elementary school. I didn’t like the song then. I most certainly do not like it now.
Based on how my day started, I reasoned it likely portended a really bad day ahead. One of my spiritual practices is taking long walks to meditate. So I decided to walk the bad morning away and sit by the lake to reset before coming back home to write. It was beautiful outside. A perfectly clear sky, clean air, and crisp — but warm in the sun. The birds were singing loudly because they were so happy. The day evoked a memory of another perfectly beautiful day, that morning in New York on September 11. We have still not recovered as a nation from where that bad day led.
