“There is no food on earth,” she said, “to slake the hunger that is longing.”

You cannot eat enough to satiate yearning; that deep hunger and craving that has been with you all your life. How much better had my mother said when I was young and pining for I knew not what, “here, take this bottle of water and go for a long hike in a beautiful place.” How much more productive and fulfilling to chug a glass of agua and spend an hour or two composing music and thereby composing myself at the piano. I did not then know how to comfort myself. But we live and learn and experience and grow old – and hopefully wiser by the seventh decade.