The sun shines with morning brilliance.  Deep winter reigns over the landscape with close to zero temps at 9AM.  The end table of Starbucks seating area is ideal for surveying the hubbub of coming and going, conversations between pairs of individuals at single tables, to the long table at the far end of the room.  The long table is over crowded with the morning regulars who congregate to comment upon the last story told, or to complain about the erratic man that we call president, or to support him.  That table has been in operation since the Agora of ancient Athens.  Participants include attorneys, realtors, tradesmen, and one female grand child appearing to be about four years old.

How lucky to be here, and to observe with gratitude this expression of common life at the beginning of 2018.  There is music quietly playing over the PA, sounds like smooth jazz this morning.  One organ chord rose above the buzz of the room transfixing me as if I were being addressed by the note.  The sustained chord was similar or even the same as the organ note that introduces Procol Harums great song Whiter Shade of Pale. Whenever I happen upon that song, the tune and lyric seizes my consciousness and becomes a template for a philosophical mediation upon life itself, and my life in particular.

Here is what the lyricist had to say about his song:

Procol Harum’s lyricist Keith Reid wrote the words to this song. In a Songfacts interview, he explained: “It’s sort of a film, really, trying to conjure up mood and tell a story. It’s about a relationship. There’s characters and there’s a location, and there’s a journey. You get the sound of the room and the feel of the room and the smell of the room. But certainly there’s a journey going on, it’s not a collection of lines just stuck together. It’s got a thread running through it.” Reid got the idea for the title when it came to him at a party, which gave him a starting point for the song. Says Reid: “I feel with songs that you’re given a piece of the puzzle, the inspiration or whatever. In this case, I had that title, ‘Whiter Shade of Pale,’ and I thought, There’s a song here. And it’s making up the puzzle that fits the piece you’ve got. You fill out the picture, you find the rest of the picture that that piece fits into.”

Indeed!  Is not life a table in a room, one story after another offered up for celebration, for sorrow, for whatever lesson the listener may chose to take, or not take from the tale?

A singular introductory chord is sounded as invitation to take note of “the feel of the room and the smell of the room–that there is a journey going on”.  And this is how we journey together.

Could Socrates yet be seated at the long table?  I suspect so……

She said, ‘There is no reason
And the truth is plain to see.’
But I wandered through my playing cards
And would not let her be…..

Nothing more need be said.  And that is Ok…..