All the world's creatures draw joy from nature's breast
2002 02 15
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It was a bitterly cold day, and the night wasn't any better. We all bundled in thick coats to brave it, and began the tedious task of packing my belongings into a truck for a move.
Why I had to move on New Year's Eve is beyond me. I wonder if my uncle has yet got over it.
Four truckloads later, I was wondering how the hell I'd managed to collect four truckloads worth of stuff in that one small room that was mine. Don't they make scientists and engineers do contests like this? "Fit all these objects into a space that looks like it couldn't possibly hold one, nevermind all, of the objects."
My new apartment was a mushroom forest of cardboard boxes and plastic bags. There was hardly enough room for me to walk through it, much less find a spot to be comfortable.
I managed to clear away some of the boxes in a small area by the television, and plonked myself down in an exhausted heap.
I felt new … a new place, finally one that was all my own, a new life, a new promise for something. It was a new beginning.
I turned on the television just then, and the first strains of music hit my ears; the first notes of what is - to me - the most magical piece of music I have ever come across; what is, to this day, my favourite piece of music.
It was a happy coincidence, almost as if someone out there knew; knew that there was a new beginning.
In full orchestra, with choir accompanying, out from my tv set and slipping through the maze-work of boxes and bags, came Beethoven's Ode To Joy.
That summer following was another Olympic games, and one of the planned ceremonies (which ended up being wonderful), was a cross-continental group of four choirs singing the Ode in unison. There was nothing more lovely than watching four groups of people sing together, who were in the four, far-flung corners of the world.
Although Beethoven wrote the music, the poem that goes with it, was written by Friedrich Schiller. The title is the English translation of the following: "Freude trinken alle Wesen / An den Bru'sten der Natur".