John 5.

For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

I was running at night on the Watertown side of the Charles, along the stretch where the path nestles right up against the river.  As I ran I gradually became aware that the water in the shallows next to me was, well, troubled.  It wasn't noisy or predictable, but every so often some part of the still surface would betray an isolated burble.  I stopped, and walked down to the edge, and perched atop a rock that jutted out into the water, and watched.  And listened.  At intervals of 10 or 20 or 40 seconds, each time in a different place, the water would be ever so slightly broken.  Silent ripples would race around the surface, hinting at an abundance of movement I could only murkily perceive.  It seemed for all the world like the path of someone dancing in the air, with toes only occasionally grazing the water. I stared into the dark, hoping to catch a clear glimpse of the unseen mover.  No such luck.  Which was fortuitous, since I left there steeped in magic and contentment, knowing that some fish or some angel was having a ball.

Godliness.

I just barely got back from a big, explosive, rumbly space blockbuster in IMAX 3D, shown in a theater attached to a furniture store which also features a trapeze school and human-sized flowers made out of jellybeans.  It was a blast.  It was a little stupefying to watch the credits roll the names of the thousands of people who helped craft that world.  They did a bang-up job -- it is a big, explosive, rumbly world.  I mean the flick was a total blast.

But there's more than one way to make a world.  Just listen to these three guys in these nine minutes.




I spent as much time in this song today as I did in that movie.  Have you heard Herb Ellis do that thing that makes a guitar sound just like a sigh?  Have you heard Ray Brown treat every single quarter note like it's the loveliest woman on earth?  Have you heard Oscar Peterson growl?  Have you heard that groove??

That groove is a world.