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| 52nd Birthday in Greece! |
Maybe it's the whole '52' thing. Maybe I'm just denying the obvious: that I can't do a lot of the things I could do 25 years ago. "The Spirit is willing..." and all that. But I went big today. I chose the difficult path, the trail that petered out to no trail at all--twisting up between huge rocks, forcing some creativity and fancy footwork. At one point, I had to pull my big-old self up the face of a pretty serious boulder. No style points, let me tell you.
Reaching some kind of passage--from one side of Meteora to another--I stopped to gobble up the little cake I'd bought earlier for the occasion. I looked behind me--in disbelief at the rocks I'd scaled, the narrow passage way up a steep canyon. And I looked ahead--out across a lush, broad meadow, deep below, knowing somehow that what went up must now go quickly down. And sharply down. Without much of a trail to follow.And just then, right then, I heard the music. And it was more than music to me. It was lush like the meadow ahead, but it was big too and bold too, like the prehistoric rocks lifting off in every direction. Whoever he was--this saxophonist--he'd chosen his studio well: massive cliffs, ancient caverns, great sound, a setting as prophetic and poetic as one could ever imagine. I could hardly believe it, my dumb luck, or maybe the sweet and not-so-dumb grace of it all, the beauty of his playing. On my birthday, no less!
I stopped partway down, to record a bit of his playing. (Turned out later that he'd been using his iPhone to do the same.) I stopped again to drink some water and enjoy the familiar hymn I'd never heard before. And then, because it inevitably works this way, I caught my toe on a little root and tumbled head first into a couple of bruising rocks. Scraped, bruised, bloodied, humbled: I carried on. And so did the sax player. All the while, he played and played and played. His song soared and then faded, soared again. My clumsiness was somehow redeemed in these phrases, not canceled mind you, but redeemed. Somehow it was all part of what had to happen on such a day. My knees hurt. My scraped up forearms stung. And still he played, still the music danced with the meadow, and my spirit with it.
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| Frenchman playing his sax, and the hills were alive! |
I'm still not sure how to post the video I shot here. But I can link you to my Facebook page--and there I've managed to paste in the footage and sound. It doesn't capture all of the wonder I felt--but it'll give you a sense of it. It was a pretty special day!
Turns out: I didn't need the iPod.
