... I am sitting amidst memory. The sounds of stories, and voices and laughter and song tell the story of who i am, at the heart. The people around me are where I have come from and, more importantly, who I have become. More than ever I realize that I am who I am because at 14 - wide-eyed, scared, lonely and alone - a group of people, thrown together by privilege and circumstance, showed me that all i was afraid of was being who i could become, and that who i could become was a person worth being.....
....She plays my goosebumps, my memory and my dreams. She plays my happy memories, my courage and my fears. She plays my sense of humour, my curiousity and my calm. And as i watch her from my seat, singing, joking, making fun of herself in a way that shows humility, yet awareness of her own power, her own talent, i am transported to another time, another realization....
....A rooftop amidst trees, the cool, granular tarring of rough roof on my back and a hot summer wind flowing over my front, I watched a million stars, lieing silently, still, amidst broken chords... they must have a name, but to me they are the chords that sound like water, dropping and breaking apart in waves on a glassy pool.... I lie and listen as music comes at me from above, on the peak of the roof, from her guitar.... her hands.... her voice.... her heart.....And that is the love that sustained me, nurtured me and gave me heart, strength and pride.... Humble and strong, soft, yet rugged. A mountain guide. And the goosebumps that come from knowing that this, this is a moment. Like, a 'moment'... that will stay with me, that i will remember, that will change me.... and i do, and it has. It was a moment of realization... not of anything in particular. just an awareness that it was a moment. As simple as that, or rather, as complex as the things that conspire to lead to awareness. The stars, the sky, the music and me. That was enough, it was everything.
A decade later. Another sky, another night and her voice brings it all back. To a room where the same people laugh, tell the same stories, the same jokes, that have linked us for a generation. Through time and change and distance and all that is growing up (or growing older). And we have, at our centre, a bond that is bigger than the stories we tell, the summer space we shared, the memories that exist for each of us. We are eachothers teachers, each others students, audiences, co-conspirators, cheerleaders, celebrators and shoulder to lean on. Life has taken us down different roads, we are a band of misfits, an unnatural table. We draw attention with our size, our disparity, the noise. there are suits and students and lawyers and singles and actors and wives and homeowners and worldtravellers and uncles and teachers and orphans and liquidity and renters... But somehow we are all the same.
We are the ones who put a lot of weight in sentiment. Empathy, Sincerity, Dependability, Integrity, Tolerance, Courtesy, Courage. These were words with meaning. Are words with meaning, for a group that devoted time, months at a stretch, to nothing but learning the value of the human spirit. Though I still feel silly spouting sentiment in a world where I am largely a cynic, I push through and put it out there. Tonight I am happy to be the fool who believes. To live in another moment. have a perfect moment live again through me. Tonight I trust that happiness and trust, purity of spirit exists. I saw it, in each memory changing, yet frozen in time, and perhaps in the spaces between us.
ps. the goosebumpsreside here - http://www.abandofowls.ca/
1 comment:
Great work.
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