Music amplifies the heart, extends the soul . . .

Music offers salvation to the beleaguered mind . . .

My weekend has been spent, largely, with family visiting from far away. In particular, with many very young family folk I don't see often . . . and whom I really don't have the energy for (at least not for all of them at once).

I have trouble with young children . . . I find it hard to ever justify simplifying any part of myself, and as such there's almost nothing I feel comfortable talking to young people about. If they ask me about something, I will respond as I would to the same question asked by an adult . . . if they don't understand, I'll struggle for an explanation, but it's very important to me to always look for a reason beyond "Well . . . well because."

What seems to happen is that I remain very calm and distant when I'm around very young people. In my experience, they seem to like this . . . I don't know exactly why. My best guess is that, perhaps, it's refreshing for them to be treated a little differently than most adults probably treat them. I'm not really interested enough in child psychology to find out for sure.

Yet, that was the extent of my weekend (at least thus far)--surrounded by shrieking children darting all to and fro, sitting coolly watching parents baby them.

Right now, I think I'll have children someday . . . but I won't have five of them, and I won't have the first (and probably last) until after I accomplish more of my creative goals.