Mental Sampler 37

When Alexander Scriabin composed the piece Prometheus back in 1909, he wrote down notes for an instrument he called clavier à lumières. According to Wikipedia, “The instrument was supposed to be a keyboard, with notes corresponding to colors as given by Scriabin’s synesthetic system, specified in the score.”

The performance I went to last month hired a lighting designer to create tubes over the stage that accomplished this, so as the musicians played the piece, the tubes filled with the colours listed in the score. You got to see the music as well as hear it. It was so cool.

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Last winter, the day before we travelled, I was kneeling on the floor and then scooted back to be able to open the drawer underneath Beorn (and now Quentin’s) habitat. I immediately felt something pop in my foot, and within minutes, a knot formed on the top of my foot. I iced it until we left, and then limped along, thinking it would heal when we got home, and I wasn’t walking that much.

That didn’t happen.

The pain mostly went away, though it was definitely still there from time to time. And the knot was there all year.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I was doing yoga, and I was backwards in ustrasana, which is a back bend. Your weight goes onto your heels because you’re pushing down on them to hold it. I’ve done this back bend every weekday from the time that we returned to the trip until November — almost a full year — and nothing has ever happened. But this time, I felt something crack in the top of my foot, and when I came out of the back bend, the pain was gone, and the knot was disappearing. It took a few more days to disappear entirely, but now my foot is completely back to normal.

Strange.

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My body does not react well to junk food anymore. This is a sad discovery. But it’s not enjoyable to eat chips at the beach if I’m going to feel terrible for two days after.