A Day In The Life

By Reza Ganjavi

Epsom Salt Blues

Went to pharmacy to get Epsom salt. Two girls working there. No other customers. Between the two of them it took good 15 minutes to manage to prepare 4 spoonful of Epsom salt. I did yoga meanwhile. End of the shop stank of cigarettes. Found out it was because a customer had been there before I go and he was a heavy smoker – the smell still persisted in the air’s molecules. That’s how ugly smoking is… When the two girls finally succeeded in putting 4 spoons of powder in a bottle and put a label on it, it turned out it was too little. I was like, please, just add a bit more thinking it’d take one minute. They went in the back and that took another ten minutes.

Guitar

Played 3.5 hours of classical guitar today in 3 sessions. It was so much fun. Been playing few hours every day and it’s fun to see the fingers execute the command of the brain so nicely. Guitar playing is pure fun over 80% of the time spent – vs. skiing which has about a 20% joy ratio.

Competition

Wrote a song about not being into competition. It felt unnatural since I first heard about competition when I was in Junior High School (age 13). It’s never been my cup of tea. I’ve got dragged into it a few times because it’s the way of the world – comes from animal nature – and it’s become so common – compete for everything – life becomes a pissing match – for a woman – for a guitar award – etc. – I’m simply not interested in that game and have never been. So wrote some melody and lyric idea about that.

Miscellaneous

Stretching was good – yoga & Feldenkrais.

Had a guest last night – made a new experimental dish: Millet + raisons + herbs + cinnamon. It was yummy – plus a stew of mixed veg’s. 100% organic (bio).

The bank completely ruined their website. Put a ½ a page of useless graphics – neither the main page nor the account page have any transfer button and you have to find it by jumping through hoops. And impossible to get back to the top page. Gave a supervisor the feedback. Their new site was designed by an amateur, with poor analysis.

Read some of Mark Lee’s new book on Krishnamurti – as a close friend of Krishnamurti said Mark Lee’s book belongs to the trash can.

Have a number of big things on my plate – got to get them done to make room for music.

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“This a an absolute classic”

Glad you find that funny Peter in the US it would have gotten done in like 3 minutes (vs. 20) and 15 times cheaper! The two geniuses finally managed to add more powder in the bottle. The funny thing is they weren't junior -- often you get this problem with apprentices here because they're a key part of the economy: cheap labor for a slave's salary...

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Played 4 hours of guitar today. Started intensive training last Sunday (3 hours) and during the week could only play 2 hours a day -- today 4, and hoping to maintain at least 3 hours a day this week. 4 hours a day is maximum you need, according to Rastropovic (whom I met back stage once in Gstaad).

I turned off my blog www.rezajournal.com after several years of regular updates. I don't want to burden Facebook with little notes but might have to -- a writer has no choice but to write. So the following is from yesterday.