Al C
male, 54 |
wholesaler
Geneva / USA
member since 29.11.2003
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Musician, writer...stuck in a weird business life.
Hey all you young punks who think you know it all...you might! ...as long as it is your heart you follow and not the notion that you've lived and seen it all. You haven't.
Know that you always knew what you were here to do. Never let it go. And the next time you see a gray bearded, balding, sort of fat old guy looking as though he might have once had it...he might have!
Follow your dream and respect everyone you meet.
peace in your hearts...nothing else will matter...trust me...trust me.
Dec. 17. 2006
The beauty of music and words, all art really is all we have to connect us to the cosmos in a palpable way.
I think one of the great maladies of the world is the stifling of human creativity. We are all infinitely creative; it is the ultimate human condition of serenity and compassion. When we succumb to the forces of getting a living as the major driving force of each day, we destroy the soul and create such disharmony that all sorts of social decay and discontent prevails.
Look at our world, the hate, the blind routine and mass following of doctrine...we lead ourselves to our own darkness.
Be creative! Take back all that is your birthright. You will leave a softer footprint where you walk.
12.21.06
The picture is Buttermilk Falls in the Adirondack Mountains of NY. It is one of my favorite places.
What strikes me most about the many landscape photos I have taken is that most of them are photos that do not have a human element in the subject. There is something so wondrous about how a pure landscape image transcends the ephemeral nature of humans. We pass so quickly...but this falls, and most land forms, remain essentially the same for centuries.
12.31.06
Here it is, the night before we move into a new year. I am always reflective on New Year's Eve. So much has happened around this time of year to me. Most of it benign, but that which is not is really quite life changing. I lost a dear grandfather on 12.31.77 after he had told me he had seen enough life for an eternity. I lost my beloved mom on 12-25-03...yup on Christmas and quite without warning after our family party. So, this time of year makes me think hard about expectations and the future.
My dad is 81 and intellectually and physically vibrrant. He is a model for all of us. He is not well read not sufficiently educated by modern standards, but he knows more than most of us. He is lovingly called the philosopher in our family. He is wildy intelligent and a formidably armed. He is a Buddhist by nature but knows not a single tenet of that thinking.
Keep in mind his single mantra for living a happy life: be satisfied with what you have..whatever it is. It is enough. Love it.
4-28-07...a poem
Delivering Groceries
I fingered the keys of her piano being certain
they did not reveal my touch by sounding out
notes in the silent air. Soon enough Mrs. Stevens
would return to the parlor ornate with fixtures and lace
from another time to serve me a cookie with milk
and to talk from her velvet chair near the curtained window.
She sat at the window looking into the parlor, always shadowed,
it seemed by afternoon light. Beneath her glasses one eye patched
with gauze, she said she could see better with the glare of sunlight
at her back. I saw you touching the piano—don’t be afraid—you can
play it. There was nothing I would have liked more than to fill the air
with melodies I had heard of Beethoven, Brahms or Chopin,
But there was not a melody I knew in my fingers, all were fixed
in my heart. I don’t remember how I even knew their names let alone
the melodies, not remembering where I first heard them. I wish I could,
Mrs. Stevens, but I can’t play I always said sadly. Sure you can,
she said so softly, the edges of her speech as smooth as her velvet chair,
I’ll hold your fingers and tap the melody out with you.
The silent air was now filled with stiffened notes, familiar to my heart,
her hands leading me gently, like a summer breeze leads movement
over new young grass sprouting from a sandy beach. I was lost
in those moments, when delivering groceries from my dad’s store,
when the harmony of the cosmos seemed to align right there
in her parlor of soft edged old things. She’d then sit at the stool
And play for me, while I listened and ate a chocolate cookie
and drank from the glass of milk in silence as the room swelled
before me with what her hands remembered, her blued-hair
bobbing to the tempo and mine in kind. There now. Here’s
a quarter for you for being such a good boy and bringing
my groceries to me. I’ll see you next week? I nodded,
left her home, and rode my bike back to the store, so slowly
as my mind replayed the melodies she saved for me. |
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