Music- The Riff

Dragonfly Out in the Sun- You Know What I Mean

Feeling Good performed by blues icon Nina Simone, written by Leslie Bricusse

Lately, I’ve been feeling dolefully pig-headed. Melancholy, like a nebulous cloud floats just above my head. It feels surreptitiously tethered to me with one purpose. To scuttle my experience of the world through a cycloptic perspective that beholds the banal and the enchanting with equal amounts of criticism. Whether some, or all of the derision is deserved, I cannot say, but some would agree my eye must be the offending culprit. Thus, any self-respecting fanatic bent on literally interpreting Christian parables would demand I pluck it out.

Nina Simone’s catalog of music makes me grateful for having two good ears 👂, which thus far, seem to function perfectly outside these hyper-critical did-you-see-the-way-she-just-looked-at-me? funks.

From the worn waistband of my Levis to the fine muscles lacing the occipital plane of this skull, life feels too tight. It squeezes and pulls at my flagging desires. If I were five, I should find a flailing tantrum momentarily satisfying.

I ask you, are we doomed to mourn every misstep we’ve made — forever?

Feeling Good assures me, the choice is mine to make. Perfection is an apparition, a wriggling earthworm on the end of a cane pole disappearing into a liquid mirage as soon as it hits water.

When I am like this, I am liable to believe in the sacrosanctity of flaws. If only we had not been tossed from the Garden to play a zero-sum game as the imperfect, mortals we are. It’s been made clear, we are not, nor will we ever be perfect. Why would any benevolent god demand the magnificent rhinoceros it created mew like a kitten?

In Nina Simone’s voice, I hear the unequivocal answer coaxing me across this chasm of despair.

Everything is as it should be. Accept it all. Stop resisting and you’ll be free, she says. Open your eyes and you will see. And, if you happen…