Three Beautiful Things 02/09/16: Cleaning Day, J. Witnesses in the Hallway, "Oye Como Va" Lenten Discipline?

1. I built my day around cleaning:  laundry, vacuuming, mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, cleaning the sinks and the bathtub, just making things as fresh as possible. The ultimate reward? Fresh bedding to crawl into at day's end.

2. Maggie and Charly go ballistic with barking whenever a visitor knocks on any door within earshot of our apartment home in our apartment building. Today, a couple from the Jehovah's Witnesses visited our building, knocking on every door. When I heard them creaking down the last flight of stairs headed our way, I stepped out into the hallway. We'd had a pleasant exchange when they entered our building about forty minutes earlier, and the Jehovah's Witness man said, perceptively, "You probably don't want us to come in, do you?" I smiled broadly and replied, "No. I don't think it would work." He saw that I was doing laundry, told me that a "man's work is never done", handed me a tract, told me I would not be disappointed in it, and he and his partner knocked on the door across the hall, the corgis barked their brains out, and this really nice man and woman left the premises. Charly and Maggie shut up. I haven't read the tract yet.

3.  I noted the other day that Rolling Stone was once again promoting its list of the 100 best guitar players -- a list the magazine compiled several years ago, I think. It got me thinking how I have no idea who is the best, if best means having some kind of mastery over the instrument and if it includes some kind of technical brilliance. If I were to rank guitar players, I'd use one criteria:  if I want to be moved by the sound of the electric guitar, who do I search for on YouTube?  Off the top of my head, here's who I turn to:

Jerry Garcia
Neil Young
David Gilmour
Joan Jett
Mark Knopfler
Eric Clapton

And, lastly, Carlos Santana.

Tonight, I found Santana's album Abraxas on YouTube.

I mind traveled back to high school -- in boys' chorus we played "Oye Como Va" over the music room sound system all the time, as if it were our theme song.

Then I thought, maybe for Lent I ought to enter into an Oye Como Va discipline and, rather than deny myself any pleasure of the flesh, I ought to deepen my spirit with forty days and forty nights of Carlos Santana.

We'll see.