Miracle in Rome It was late in 67. I was alone in Peters flat, the Lungotevere delle Armi just beyond the gate where sat the Pakistani Consulate. It was a fairly mild day. Maybe even a bit balmy for October. No precipitation likely. Id already had my morning Rothmans, my cappuccino. Elsa hadnt called yet. Mario busy painting. No appointments pending. What to do!? I rifled through Peters sagging LP shelves. Here was an album cover with an idyllic, picture-perfect scene. A mill by a stream, or was it a barn? Three Places in New England. I hadnt recalled the composers name. Charles Ives? Whos he!? I was wafted back and further back and no escaping poetry into those unexpected clearings, those deep blue skies remembered from my lonesome summers in the Shawagunks with my mom & dad. Forced to accompany him on his daily morning trek into those apple woodlands across the county road, a walk spiralling upwards until all was lost from view, except those narrow clearings where Gerardo opened up his army-cot and stripped down nearly naked. His body bronzed. He wore a cotton cap and sunglasses; stretched out in worship to the sweating sun. Allowed to sit on the cots edge, and twiddling my thumbs, and for a four-year-old, it was pretty much rough-going; for children, as I imagine now, have no sense of Time stretched out and further out until the entire hillside was aflame in my imaginings. Even the surrounding birds refused to sing to me. Id felt inside abandoned. But perhaps dad unknowingly was giving me a gift of silence and the sun. What a whacky notion! He may have slumbered off a bit; maybe not entirely, but just enough not to be distracted by my inner yearnings, my inert wisdom. He mustve been contemplating something! His escape from réalité? Life away from the suffocating Bronx? We were surely in some other realm entirely where Heavens deepened blue rehearsed for greater things to come. But how would I, too young to really know my future or my dads, even? It was time to go. He waved me off, and I scampered down the rutted, gravelled road, across the stream in its dreamy realm, and runningrunningrunning back to the barnyard where Id joined my morning friends, Mr. Rabbit and the kittens and the hens. We spoke in tongues, though its been terribly so long Ive forgotten nearly all the words. What words remain are lodged so deep within me. Painfully, sometimes. Am I wise? Am I good? When called upon, I hear those whispers, those few words whispering, those seeds within me still. The misty sunlight filters quietly within the sitting-room, crossing Peters baby-grand in an afterglow. I am back in my chair. I am lifted from my past. I am re-connecting with those long-forgotten words. Some Ive heard before. Some Ive sung. Some repeated endlessly. Others, maybe not. The music carries me aloft to an unimagined realm. I am here and I am not. Gerard Malanga
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 12:36:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015