Simple joys

This summer, the studio is getting rebuilt. I had been promising myself for at least four years that this summer, I'll fix up my studio. It's finally happening, thanks to the extraordinarily generous help of my wife and one of my former students.

Today, our neighbor, an absolute craftsman (oh, you should see the Rolls he rebuilt, inside and out, stellar bodywork) will be over to start painting it. The Feng Shui for Dummies book recommended, due to its position in the house, that we should go with yellow; one of my friends who does really scary energy-manipulating kung fu said I should have red, white, and yellow in my environment; and those colors correspond to the colors of my five-element "causative factor." Too many votes from too many unconnected sources not to listen to them; so, yellow it was. Besides, a lot of my acoustical treatment is black and dark gray, so I needed it to be a little brighter. And it has been white for ten years, it's time for a change.

But on to the simple joys: My wife and I went to the lamp store to pick out something new to put on the ceiling. (I didn't want to trust my own judgement; sets, I can decorate, homes I need her help on.) I was looking at the various options, and then I was drawn to one in particular: bright, full of light, with crystal ribbons, rather than crystal spheres. "That one," I thought.

My wife came over to where I was standing, looked at the various crystal/sparkly lights, and then pointed to the very light I had chosen, and said "That one."

Things haven't been particularly enjoyable recently, the MS is discontented with something and is making its annoyance known, quite annoyingly; but when my wife and I point at exactly the same thing and say "That one," it's a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

I haven't had a lot of wonderful feelings for the last... well, too long. "Wonderful," when it finally comes for a visit, however small or brief, is ... simply wonderful.