Music for a philosophy of life

I'll be taking Mastery I early in February. The registration materials include this item:

In preparation for Mastery I, please choose a piece of music to bring on a CD to the program that summarizes your philosophy of life. This piece of music is to be clearly labeled with your name, the song title and the track number.

I have been agonizing over this for more than a week now. I'm realizing that I don't much listen to music with lyrics (I like to listen to music while I'm writing, and lyrics are a distraction). When I do listen to music with lyrics, it's usually something rollicking, like "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown." Fun stuff, but about as far as you can get from my philosophy of life.

A couple of years ago Seattle's Civic Light Opera put on Annie Get Your Gun. The actress who played Annie sang a rendition of Sun in the Morning that is a strong contender. Sweet as a sigh, heartfelt as a prayer. It resonates with me. But does it nail my philosophy of life?

I considered finding a piece of music without lyrics. Grieg's Morning Mood, say. I've loved that one since I was a kid. But the whole point is for the music to articulate my philosophy. If I have to write a speech to go with it, it kind of misses the point.

So... here's my philosophy of life, close as I know. Let me know if any piece of music that you know springs to mind.

I feel that the connections between living things are the truest reality, and that this world is a laboratory or classroom for learning the importance of those connections, and how to make and sustain them. We have bodies that need food, so that we can break bread together. We have beauty around us, so that we can share it and retell it. In this life, we learn to give and accept things we need, things that may sometimes be scarce. We sample fear and trust and betrayal and loyalty and anger and remorse. We learn love.

In a nutshell, we are here to pet the cat. And the cat is here to be a warm bundle in our arms, and soothe our hearts with purring. The rest is props and shop dressing.

An overdue update

Wow, it has been a long time since I posted. So much has happened around here. In brief:

• We processed SOME of the wood that we took down in the summer of 07. We filled the woodshed completely, and have been enjoying dry firewood this winter. This is especially important since we don't have a furnace currently. More on that later.
• I have been taking a series of experiential classes through Context International: Pursuit of Excellence, The Wall, Advancement of Excellence, and Inside Passage. I'll be taking Mastery I in a few weeks. These courses have really helped me turn a lot of corners in my life. The last traces of burnout seem to have been swept away. I'm ready and eager to get back into the workplace. My relationship with Jim is stronger and happier. And...
• I have started work on a piece of fiction. I'm thinking of a series of short stories that together can become a book. The setting is Baghdad around 785 to 800 AD -- during the Abbasid caliphate. (The idea has been rattling around in my head for decades, long before Baghdad became a staple of the evening news.) I've been doing research on the period. I've been writing back stories for the characters. Those back stories are a great tool -- when I put the character in a scene, the nuances of what he does and what he notices and how he speaks all fall into place. Exhausting, exhilarating work.
• We ripped out the kitchen cabinets. We'd seen a wee bit of mold and were deeply concerned that there was a lot more hidden behind the cabinets. There was not (whew!). However...
• We discovered that mice had been chewing the wiring. Mostly old damage, apparently from before we moved in. But exposed wires are dangerous no matter how long they have been there. There were scorch marks around some of them. So...
• Most of the circuits in the house have been shut off. We are rewiring the entire house in conduit -- it's called a "commercial tube job" and it's a monstrous piece of work. There might be a couple of walls we don't have to rip open, but essentially the house will be a shambles for months.
  We trust the circuits Jim put in conduit out to the garage, and we are running heavy duty extension cords from them to various parts of the house. And he ran a fresh wire to the water heater early on. But the furnace is not hooked up. Nor is the drier, although the washer is.

The electrical issue has thrown a wrench in the kitchen remodel plans. We had set up a very nice camp kitchen on the back porch, in September. (This had the happy side effect of necessitating an enclosure for the goats OFF the back porch.) That became less useful when we had that little bout of freezing weather. We had to disconnect the hose from the utility sink we had set up. We had to keep popping back into the house to warm up.

And the toaster seemed not to work. Turns out that ambient temperature has an effect there -- those little elements were giving it their all, but the cold pouring into the bread slots defeated them. Indoors, we get toast.

So now we are well on the way to at indoor camp kitchen -- something we can live with until we redo the wiring, move the electrical panel (that was part of the original remodel plan), and have the inspector out. After the inspection, we can put drywall up, install cabinets. Until then, we will have cheap counters & plastic rolling drawer units. We'll tack down a scrap of vinyl flooring to protect the exposed subfloor. The dishwasher is hooked up and usable (provided we aren't running the space heater in the living room at the same time). The kitchen sink will go in RSN. We will get to test-drive and fine-tune the layout of the new kitchen. We've already been doing a lot of that -- it is increasingly obvious that we will not be buying off-the-shelf cabinets. Jim will be building cabinets that tuck into wall spaces, especially where we have thickened walls. He has a nice stockpile of high-end hinges and drawer slides, and that will deal with a lot of the expense.

Since we have expanded the kitchen, taking over the old laundry room, we'll have about 40% more counter space, somewhat more cupboard space, and a much, much better traffic flow. We will have our caffeine corner -- coffee & tea equipment isolated in one corner of the kitchen, with its own tiny bar sink. The stove will be propane, and we will be installing the tankless gas water heater we've had in the box since before we moved here. Hot water during power outages! Woo-hoo!

And, let's see, what else has been going on? Jim's been taking classes at Bellevue College, formalizing his on-the-job business training and filling in a few gaps. He is taking a break from that now, to focus more on the house projects. (Projects. Did I mention the upstairs bath? It ended up needing a remodel as part of the kitchen remodel. It's stripped out, expanded, and has a generous shower stall framed in.)

Jim is now looking into becoming a real estate agent. I think he'd be good at it. This is a scary market to start in, but it's a scary market for doing much of anything. I'm looking for work as a writer. I'm hanging back on the faux finishing until the economy picks up, but I'll be doing all the walls in the house. That will be fun, and I'll have some cool stuff for my finishing portfolio.