Fanfare...

Ah, but there is no drum roll, no cymbal crash, no horns raised in valiant splendor as if to sing the praises of Gabriel. Quite often the music of life is just there, just below the surface, like the softest of played strings, the quietest of choruses. There is no beginning... one can always go back further in time... in life, something always came before.

Do you recall the summer of... the summer of that terrible heat wave? Oh, that's right, there have been so many. There have been many summers, many heat waves, and so very many stories to tell. Friends and strangers, family and neighbors... they all struggle to brave the long summer days and nights. Some have desires. For still some more, those desires are very strong. Their desires are secret, kept hidden deep inside... Some try to fight them, others do not.

Meanwhile, life goes on. Cruel, heartless, pain-in-the-ass life... drives one to drink and another to drugs and another to both, another to medication, while others just suffer through. As if life itself were not enough, there are so many things that can be thrown at one by other human beings. A person can be abused in the body, abused in the mind, and sometimes the worse of the two is the mind, ongoing and unrelenting. And children suffer it all, most of it, whether as passengers in the car or as bruised or bullied little soldiers... blessed be the loved ones

Without digressing further, and forgetting that I am typing this on a laptop and you are reading it on a similar type of screen, let us go back to a time in recent history before everyone owned a computer and a cellphone and before electronics ruled the world. It reflects on a simpler time, not necessarily a better one, a time the author can better relate to in its universality and in reference to not only one's own childhood, but that of one's family. It also bares thoughts and feelings, in short, the contents of one's soul, taking one back to the moment the sunlight first exposed one's secrets...

Down violins... and I thank you...

Nadine T