There Stands the Glass

Concerned for my welfare, my life partner insisted I meet with my favorite physician last Thursday. The conscientiously frank doctor told me that in addition to looking ill, I was far too skinny. I agree with her first point.

After managing adequately for nine months, I was finally broken by the quarantine in late December. Like millions of other people, I miss seeing friends and my extended family. I miss traveling. I miss working. I miss breathing fresh warm air. Insomnia aggravates my restlessness.

Even though I’m no longer quarantine thick- I’ve dropped nine pounds in the past three weeks- I’m still 11 pounds from my weight goal. My doctor’s insistence that a bit of extra padding is healthy won’t put me back into 32-waist pants.

Still despondent and anemic on Friday, I didn’t binge on the plethora of new music as is my weekly custom. Instead, I watched Grand Théâtre de Genève’s exquisite production of Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in one sitting. Filmed without an audience in January, it’s the best of the three renditions of the deliriously lethargic work I’ve seen. The existential libretto and body contortions of the dance troupe heightened my malaise and body image issues.

I lay in bed listening to pianist Benjamin Grosvenor’s new album Liszt as my stomach growled and my head spun following Debussy’s 167-minute opera. An ignorant rube, I wasn’t familiar with Liszt’s electrifying “Années de pèlerinage II, S. 161.” I’m still reeling from the transformative enlightenment that walloped me at the 3:37 mark.

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