just some notes to myself

• In a Berlin concert hall so many years ago, the flamenco guitarist Carlos Montoya played to an increasingly enthusiastic crowd. His music soared and sorrowed, danced and diminished in the most ordinary and delicious ways. The audience loved him and I did too.

And when he had finished, he was called back three, four, five times ... I don't remember, but it was clear the crowd would call him back forever, given half a chance.

Finally, he returned to the stage one last time and announced in English since he could not speak German, "I am tired. I will play you some scales." And he did ... hammering-on scales, plain as oatmeal, the very basic-most beginnings of all the music he had played before. It was all he had ... scales ... and I thought the auditorium might collapse with the love and applause that followed.

Who, in the end, has more than scales? Scales of unspeakable beauty, scales of the most heinous destructiveness, scales as plain as oatmeal ... who, in the end, has more than scales?

• The truth is that everything is the truth. And if you believe that one, I'll tell you another.

• If "radical acceptance" meant anything at all, how could it help but be as sad as a woman who thinks that make-up might change anything?

• In the depths of the jungle, the tiger hunts on padded feet, quiet as a wet leaf. S/he attacks, when possible, from behind ...  what would be the point of defying common sense? 

• The only music that beats this music is this music. Don't mistake the musician for the music. The only music that beats this music is this music.

• I cannot protect you. 

• As from afar, shimmering in each other's eyes, the would-be pair threads a tortuous path across the crowded dance floor and into each other's arms. Ordinary and extraordinary meet at last ... and touch and marvel and enfold ... and dance at last the dance that never started nor finished either. It is an agreeable whole that defies all lackadaisical reference to "wholeness." But there is shimmering.