At the end of the second movement (Andante) of Mozart’s Symphony No 40 in G Minor.
In a splendid performance this evening at Carnegie Hall.
It induced a feeling of serenity, of gladness. Of being lulled into peacefulness.
In such a state, I thought — with such pleasure — who can hurt me? Let them try. I have music. Literature.
I have nature — yes, here in the City. I was walking all afternoon today. There was a slight hint of spring in the air.
I love my City. I am in daily intercourse with city dwellers — either in earnest; or transitorily, casually, in a ceaseless intermingling and flux best described by Walt Whitman. I receive (in Whitman’s words) love and return it:
“If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her, do I not often meet strangers in the street, and love them?”
— Walt Whitman, Chants Democratic
“I am in love … with all my fellows upon the earth.”
— Walt Whitman, Chants Democratic
I have a loving and supportive wife who is devoted to me and makes it her business day in and day out to make me as happy as possible and to see me fulfilled.
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My love of such things, both tangible and ethereal, and of people who share and reciprocate such feelings, cannot be destroyed by petty persons who envy me.
See my post
“Cruelty has a human heart.”
— Roger W. Smith
Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2019
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Addendum:
I read in today’s New York Times the following:
Where will El Chapo most likely go to jail?
We won’t know until sentencing, but it’s probable that Mr. Guzmán will be sent to the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo., more commonly known as the ADX.
The ADX can house up to 500 prisoners in its eight units. Inmates spend their days in 12-by-7-foot cells with thick concrete walls and double sets of sliding metal doors (with solid exteriors, so prisoners can’t see one another). A single window, about three feet high but only four inches wide, offers a notched glimpse of sky and little else. Each cell has a sink-toilet combo and an automated shower, and prisoners sleep on concrete slabs topped with thin mattresses. Most cells also have televisions (with built-in radios), and inmates have access to books and periodicals, as well as certain arts-and-craft materials.
Drug lord Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera (El Chapo) was certainly guilty, and he is not a nice guy. He was a brutal criminal who murdered — or ordered and witnessed the killings of — opponents and underlings viciously and sadistically without compunction. A psychopath.
But reflecting upon my blessings today, I felt, why must the maximum amount of suffering and deprivation be inflicted upon criminals locked up? It’s another kind of cruelty; organized, state sanctioned cruelty.
I am not trying to find reasons to extenuate El Chapo’s crimes. Except, perhaps, to say that the worst psychopaths seem to have been doomed to be what they became from the start. Deprivation of the worst sort, not solely or primarily economic, must have resulted in their growing up without the normal, so called human, feelings that bind us together.