April was one gigantic flurry of activity.

My apologies to those who wrote, wondering if I was okay and expressing your concern.  I appreciate your thoughts and I apologize for concerning you. Yes,  I am very much okay.  April was a month of being very much alive.

On the seventh month of this online's journal's existence, I took a month long sabbatical from it. This also means I am now 50 and one half years old.  

 Cheers to that!

With Otis, 
The Neighborhood Dawg

In the main, it was a month overflowing with good, productive and fun activity, sprinkled with a goodly bit of sobering concern and back and forth communication over health issues with family members in Hawai`i.

It was a month of  DOING with very little time to pause and reflect, much less write about that activity. I was doing more public speaking and lecturing than usual, which requires a certain amount of forethought, preoccupation, and preparation.  I think I shall remind myself of the wisdom of the more frequent use of the NO word. 

I much prefer the written word than the spoken one, yet  my journal writing was reduced to quick jottings on a notepad, although the experiences themselves were very full. I have been writing non-stop, but more for work-related purposes, including an ambitious newsletter.

Fortunately, I took the edge off the seriousness of work-related writing with some recreational liner notes writing for acquaintances who are doing a CD. Also, earlier in the month of April, I finished up a tribute site for Ohta San, who I wrote about in two of my latter entries, back in late March:

http://www.oocities.org/ohtasan2020/

I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about this virtuoso and felt impelled to share his life story -- at least, parts of it -- with others who are looking for online info on him.  In another month or so, google.com's search engine will pick the site up, making it available to his online fans and fans-to-be.

 I just heard on Saturday's Aloha Joe Online Radio Show that "Ohta San" has put out yet another CD, this time a CD with Beatle tunes. Yes!  His `Ukulele Bach CD is fabulous and he lives up to every nuance of the meaning of the word, virtuoso.

"Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind."
~ Lewis Thomas (1913-94), U.S. physician, educator. The Medusa and the Snail, "On Thinking about Thinking" (1979) 

This month I am purposefully cutting back on "doing" to get back to "being" in balance with time to listen to Bach.  Really listen. Transfixed.

I shall perhaps carve out some time to expand on those pithy notes, retrospectively, as I want to remember some of the days with the detail that only journaling ensures. But I won't hold myself to doing so, as a quick glance of my calendar keeps me reticent in making promises to myself that I may not keep.  

We shall see...

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