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I was laying back on the couch last night petting
my dog Sasha and listening to Beethoven's Sonata
Op. 27 No. 2 — the famous "Moonlight" sonata,
when I got to thinking about the time in my youth,
the early 70s, when I first listened to that work.

Back then the performance was by Van Cliburn
and not Brendel. But no matter, the same sonata —
sonata quasi una fantasia as Beethoven called it —
and I got to wondering whether if in those days there
had been some sort of time portal that I could look
through, like a cosmic television to the future, if
I would have looked into the portal and seen myself
with my good dog Sasha, and feel too the happiness I
feel now, if I would not have wanted to just jump
forward in time to that given moment — which is
to say my current time.

And what of all the days between then and now?
Would I have been always waiting for that moment
of happiness to arrive? There would of course be
other moments of happiness throughout the span of
my life. But I think that the future vision might
have always been in the background.

I think we should all be granted such a portal
when we are young — a sort of guarantee of some
happy period in our future. Because it's really
not the same just imagining — quasi una fantasia —
that there would be such. Would it not make the
span of years far less difficult if we knew for
certain, through all the tough times, that there
would be some happy time in the future — and to
be able to see it, feel it, something to hang onto?

Sometimes the evenings breed strange thoughts
in the moonlight.

(Photo by Richard Keeling.)

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