– Hearing the Fifth Symphony played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra acquiring on records the 7^th + 9^th + becoming familiar with them, and at the same time buying some new records of Wagner – Wagner – the vain, the arrogant petulant conceited man produces boastful, brassy theatrical flares of sound, often mechanical, seldom inspired – at best good pageant material.
     Beethoven, the profoundly religious, emotional man, pursued by great sorrow all his life, produced deep, elemental music that touches the highest peak of  joy + the lowest depths of sorrow and never sounds the same, never grows old.  In his gayest scherzos, there is always and undercurrent of deep seriousness – his joy is never carnal but an exultation of the spirit, his sorrow never abject or helpless, but a real tragic solemnity.
     I think that I am standing on the brink of an abyss of stagnant mire – or are my feet already “sunken?”  The old serious attitude toward life seems gone – Life is easy.  I am fat + healthy – My job flatters + pleases me – it presents no hardships -
     The body is the “temple of the soul” – strange to say, the more