Sad Guitar

I have a friend I see only rarely. But that's not a bad thing, since the friend I'm talking about is a guitar, and I only visit this friend when I am anxious or sad.

I used to have ambitions to play music, but those quickly subsided to using guitar as a form of therapy - some (my wife and many previous roommates) might call it obsessive-compulsive noodling, but it's therapy to me. And when it comes to bringing me out of a funk, my guitar is an effective friend.

I said I've only seen my guitar rarely, and that's true. It's been mostly sitting in a closet, because I've mostly been happy.

It has been used though:

It came out and helped me on 9/11. I strummed it from time to time when GWB's government started some 'war' somewhere; and I held it during thankfully infrequent, if terrible, natural disasters. It also helped when the 'recession' swept away most of my retirement. (I think my fingers, absent the calluses of persistent players, bled on that one.)

But lately I find myself picking it up at least weekly, and not out of some resurgence of juvenile rock dreams. The progress (or lack of same, I guess) with the 'war' in Afghanistan, and now the new 'war' in Libya; the Japanese Quaketsunamimeltdown; and a death in the family.

And there's general anxiety too. I am not sure why I feel it, when there is so much specific to be anxious about, but I am feeling a nonspecific unease that won't let up. Maybe it's a side effect of the failure of Hope - once promised but increasingly unlikely to be delivered by President Obama.

But perhaps not. It might be that I am getting older and not feeling any wiser. Or worse, that I feel there is a decrease in wisdom in the World in general, and there is nothing I can do about it.

Except play my guitar ...