THE MUSIC IN MY HEART Chapter 1

THE SPINNING OF THE EARTH

25 December, 2007

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"We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are."

All journeys begin in the East. This is an immutable fact of life. Each day the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Our globe, if viewed from the north, turns around counter-clockwise, and our lives are a constant battle between Time, which moves as the hands of a clock around in one direction, and the World, which is constantly spinning in another..

Our time on the Earth is thus a circular journey, or rather a series of circular journeys. Time, it seems, is not linear, and eventually....inevitably, we will return from whence we came, as sure as the sun rises and sets each day.

We as humans are stubborn creatures. We seek ( and mistakenly believe) that we can be Masters of time.

This why we tend to go west, trying vainly to catch up with the sun as it runs away from us in an endless loop, trying to cheat time.

The West, for us, represents the new Frontier...youth...the quest for change. It is not for nothing that Horace Greeley advised the ambitious: " Go West , young man," a phrase which became a byword for adventure.

My son was born in the East, in Korea. His life has been a steady progression westward, first to London, where he was schooled at St. Paul's, then to the States, to Duke, and recently to the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Now he is moving to LA to work as a film scorer, and he and I are going to drive a UHaul across the country together.

We are at different stages in the journey of life, but we are united in our enthusiasm for new things. In short, we like to head West, and this journal is about this private journey.

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