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Free writing:  what’s on my mind?  I apologize in advance if this post ends up twisting and turning more than one particular road I drove on earlier today. It was a rainy, grey, gloomy, cool fall day as I set out to, well, just to. I set out to.  When I left home this morning, it wasn’t raining, but showers were in the forecast. 

So, there I was, driving in the rain, windshield wipers going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The music of choice – even that wasn’t a choice, as I had my iPod on shuffle. BUT…it was set to shuffle on a playlist called “Recently Added.”  Over the past three weeks, I’ve probably swapped about 100 songs out of my collection of 1,200, and there seems to be a definitive mood. I’ve added a lot of Stevie Wonder, Sade, Jill Scott, and Frank McComb - soul artists who write very deep and meaningful lyrics, and also pay attention to how their music composition interacts with the lyrics.  And in listening to deep song after deep song play, something hit a chord with me. (Yes, the pun was intended.) Those were songs of heartache and heartbreak, of struggle, of pain. But there were also songs about love, about life, about living and aspiring and achieving Higher Ground. Uplifting songs of hope.  Those words spoke to me, as if the artists themselves were in the passenger seat, speaking to me.

Maybe it’s the function of the small world I live in right now, but it seems that we’ve lost our focus on love and life, and living and aspiring. It seems we’re caught up in reality TV and replacement refs and negative political ads…and money.  Those who have a lot, we’re mad that they want more. Of course, we want more. Or need more. Both, really. Who are you voting for? Who are you voting off? I’m so tired, not enough hours in the day to meet all the demands, complain, complain, complain, compare, contrast, sink deeper and deeper and withdraw within ourselves and become closed and…

...stop sharing. 

A Rare Moment On A Sunday Night

There I was…this past Sunday night, 10 PM; full moon, cool air, music playing, open road, not another car, or house, or anything in sight. I was in the middle of one of those moments that are rare, that comes along as a surprise and if you’re not careful, it could disappear just as fast and unexpected as it came. 

 

Earlier in the day, I saw a link on a website about a “Summer’s End” festival at one of my favorite State Parks, Letchworth; the self-proclaimed “Grand Canyon of the East.” The link spoke of a couple of local bands on an outdoor stage, food, and fireworks at 9PM. I’ve been to this park probably ten or so times in my five years in Western New York, but always in the early afternoon – never in the evening, never at night. 

 

I had plans earlier in the day, that had a moving target of an end time, so left my decision on whether to go up in the air – not unlike the 25-or-so balloons that launched all within a half-hour period, the evening before at the annual New York State Festival of Balloon – coincidentally the next small town south of the Grand Canyon (of the East). As it turned out, my plans ended at 5:30, and without really consciously deciding, I was on the highway, headed south to Letchworth.

One hour and fifteen minutes later, I reached the south entrance of the park – the farther entrance, the entrance I normally use. That entrance is where the entrance to the gorge is situated, near what is known as High Falls. My memory (on a day where consciousness had slipped into a nice relaxed state), threw me a curve ball. There was hardly anyone at the main park area in that part of the park. But at this point, it was 7PM, I was hungry, and the concession stand was open, so I ordered a nicely typical burger and fries, went outside to a lonely picnic table, and ate in solitude.  The sun had already set behind the ridge overlooking the gorge, but it had not officially set on Western New York, so I was sitting in a dark shadow with a fading blue sky overhead. In peaceful solitude. And it was here that I felt the beginning of something special, something rare.