We All Go Down

Age

Look how virile he is, how his voice is deep and strong
Look how he lifts his children up over his head in joy and play
and finds the heaviest chore easy
All you who are young remember that age will come.....
The most handsome amomgst us
The most talented
The most beautiful
Whose mouth is like honey
And whose thoughts like eternity
All Fade like grass

Just a Thought

I was here before you found me.
I existed before then in all of who I am.
I cried and laughed and was beautiful and alive before you were around.
I can do it again by the grace of God.
I don't exist because of you - we share a path, but we can walk it separately.
You don't define me - I've learned who I am a long time ago and that won't change.

There are still things you don't know. There are so many visions that you aren't even a part of - and they are beautiful.

I can live on them again and in them again - they are a part of my sinews and the very basis of me.....you are just a part.

Leonard Bernstein

How can I explain the pain I feel when I look at pictures of Leonard Bernstein? I've always had a problem with pictures of people, starting with my parents when I was pretty small. I always see something in them, a spirit perhaps - something in the eyes?

I've downloaded Bernstein's "Make Our Garden Grow" from his Candide.....it's so beautiful, it gives me goosebumps - both the music and the lyrics..."we're neither pure nor wise nor good...." "before we die, make some sense of this life".......

The music is so breathtaking, it literally makes me tear up. Then there's his "West Side Story" and his Mass with it's "Simple Song".....

I think of this Jewish son of Jewish refugees from Russia. His father was a businessman who liked that his son had a love of music - but not as a calling, a career. Leonard had a different plan and made it happen.

He was physically beautiful, he had a flare for drama - if you look at his photographs, he just has a way of holding that cigarette, holding that head of thick hair, looking off into the distance with that leonine face......

As a believer, I feel a special burden for this son of Abraham.....the picture of him against the Wailing Wall with his yarmulke on chokes me up.

I imagine him trying to make sense of the Holocaust - and trying to believe in a God that could allow that to happen - and I wonder how many other Bernstein-like artists got swallowed up by the evil of Hitler.

I read about his bisexuality/homosexuality and his depression. He was devoted to his wife and stayed by her side as she died of cancer. He adored his children - and.....he lived his life.

I pray to God that he found solace under the wings of the almighty somehow. He left us a great legacy of beauty and grace here on earth.