I am listening this morning to some of Beethoven’s Sonatas as performed by Artur Schnabel. He’s really quite good. He started off with Moonlight Sonata. Beethoven named this “sonata quasi una fantasia,” and it was his 14th piano sonata, Op. 27, No. 2, written in C# Minor. What a beautiful piece of music to wake up to!
I used to play Moonlight — maybe twenty years ago — but I got out of the piano practice habit for a while. Now I’m back to it, trying to relearn it. It’s hard! My fingers don’t move to muscle memory as much as I thought they would. But there is a little muscle memory rfemaining. If I close my eyes and just let it flow, sometimes those twenty years come back as though I were transported in time. I’m also planning on picking up Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, which I had begun working on way back then too.
And I’m also relearning Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# Minor, a dramatic and really fun piece to play. While I’m at it, I’m also brushing up my rendition of Gershwin’s three preludes, fine-tuning the second prelude, re-learning the third, and then learning for the first time the first prelude. Oh, there was a Chopin Pollinaise I used to play, and I’d like to relearn that. Actually, I think I just had the first three lines down, haha. Guess I’ll need to work harder on that one.
But there’s just not enough time! I’ve shunned my tuba for the past 6 months. They say you lose it if you don’t use it. Right now I’m having a heck of a time getting into the lower registers. I can’t get my lips loosened or pliable enough. They need to relax, just let it go, and buzz down low. I need to make it a habit to daily, for a while at least, getting some tuba time in .
And of course there’s so much I want to read that I haven’t read yet. You know, I’ve never read Moby Dick. I’ve fallen in love with the writings of Mari Sandoz, who grew up in the Niobrara River region of Nebraska not far from the haunts of my great-great grandfather and his family. Her descriptions of life on the Great Plains — especially the harsh winters — is breath-taking. I’ve read her Cheyenne Autumn and her work on Crazy Horse, and I’m in the middle of Old Jules (a work about her father). She also wrote Cattlemen (haven’t read yet) and another called Beavermen (hunters after beaver pelts). She won pulitzer(s) for some of her work.
One book that I read this past year is Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt, former Nebraska poet laureate. It’s wonderful.
Writing? I’m doing that too. Just released Saving Arapahoe, the third book in the Johnny Stevens Adventures Series. I’m working on a big fictional piece that I want to finish before I die (no, I’m not announcing any revelation, just a comment that I want to get the book written. I’m still in the early stages — a full outline has yet to be completed. It’ll be called — no, I’m not going to release the name just yet — but it’ll be something appropriate.
I’ve got a Grandpa kind of book where he has discussions with his grandkids about various things. That’s still being formed — notes and a couple of chapters — but I’m not sure where that’s going.
I’ve got a couple other manuscripts well underway: Jimmy and the Facinorous Wizard is one that I wrote twenty years ago and need to revamp/rewrite portions of it. I also wrote a sequel to Off Balance maybe ten-twelve years ago and I need to update … I’ve gone from having PD for 15 years to 25 years. That’s amazing to me …. I’m still kicking around, way longer than my first neuro said I would.
What’s slowing me down?
If I stand back and look at things objectively, it seems that my back pain gets in the way of everything else. It’s hard to put on socks and underwear and pants in the morning because it’s hard to reach my feet. I just can’t bend my legs easily, because of my back. Now, I think the back pain is related to PD. When I walk, I tend to shuffle, and that surely doesn’t help matters. It’s a strain on my lower back, not to mention the beating that my toes and toe-nails take.
Two summers ago I had an orthopedist (sp) look at it. He did an MRI or CT Scan (I don ‘t remember) and determined that I have arthritis in my spinal column. Several of the disks have arthritic tissue hitting the sides (or walls) of the disks. I don’t know if I have that right, but it’s something like that. Anyway, He tried to remove the pain sensory nerve (that’s not what it’s called but I’m drawing a blank right now), and I thought at first it helped, but I think that was just wishful thinking. By the end of the week, my pain was back to square one.
But … do not lose hope! I am looking into a back brace that leverages the thighs to help lift up the upper body, taking some of the weight off my hips, which should alleviate much of the back pain. I tried the device for 10 minutes at a PD walk-a-thon a month or two ago, and it was delicious. The device forced me to stand up straight, shoulders back, chest up and out, and head back. I was pain free for those ten minutes and it was wonderful. There was even a bit of a residual effect afterwards. This brace fixes my posture problems. I will keep y’all updated on how it goes. I’m the tenth person who will be wearing this brace (so far) so it’s relatively new. I’ll keep the PD community updated.
Praise God that there are new things coming along all the time! I just need to hang in there on a daily basis, focus on him, and let him take care of worrying about things. He’s the one in charge. He takes care of the birds in the air or the flowers in the field, and he’ll take care of me. I just need to submit to him and obey when I hear him calling me.
I’ve written way too much this morning, but it’s been fun.
See ya.