I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes

The gray hues and the silent white sky of today all remind me that my time in the country with my sad eyed lady of the lowlands will soon be over. Stories of her people during the war, her glances as I paint, games of her one room childhood, the face of the man she has picked out for me, all oscillate in the muddy puddles outside the door as the steady rain falls softly. Tomorrow the red syrup of pomegranate seeds that runs between my fingers like they did when I was five and sat on the tiled courtyard in a desert will be wiped away and I’ll make my way out of the door frame of a shaking house that I cannot hide in anymore.

Mercedes Sosa sings “Gracias a la Vida” in my mind and like the first time I heard her singing it, laying on the dark hardwood floor in the room above the art studio at Westover in the Connecticut winter, I wish I could understand Spanish and that red wine could actually warm you up. Gvansta and I are laughing as I ask for the gazillionth time to translate each line of this much covered folk song…

“Thanks to life which has given me so much,
It gave me two eyes that when I open them,
I can distinguish perfectly black from white,
And in the high heaven its starry background,
And in the multitudes the man I love.”

I don't know what God has in the year to come or what looms in the multitudes, but I know I can trust the loving Father and thank him for the life I've been given.