Ou te caches-tu, Alegria, pour ces enfants de la rue qui n’ont meme pas de quoi se payer un rire. Ce soir, nos cris de joie deviendront cris de rage alors que des milliers de jeunes coeurs se perdont au plus profond de notre bienveillance. Vivement que le chant d’Alegria entraine ceux de nous qui ont la volonte d’agir!
Translation: We have no illusions. The children of the streets will not see Alegria. Laughter is still a luxury they cannot afford. Tonight, our cries of joy will become screams of rage that millions of young hearts will again freeze in the gutters of our goodwill. May Alegria become a rallying cry for those of us who have a voice.
A gray feather, small and delicate and fine, floats like a tiny puff of smoke before snagging itself on a leaf the color of a canary. A sky of blue, backdrop to swiftly-moving clouds, does not betray the turbulence of the days before, but the trees still drip with remnants of the rain. Balmy October days are unexpectedly delightful in a mean sort of way, tricky enough to convince you that a bit of summer still lingers before the undeniable curtain of cold descends for good.
How sad, I think as I write this, that you will never feel the same emotional thrill I feel when listening to this song. How could you? You weren’t there in that time in my life when I was hearing it. It’s a lonely thing, that we don’t share such memories. You have songs that will instantly bring you back to certain moments in your life, and I won’t know what or how it moves you. Even if we listened to it together doesn’t mean we will both be transported to that time and place. Music affects us differently. I suppose everything does. It’s a wonder we find any commonality at all, so wondrously variable are our experiences and perception.
Most of us have those songs that mean something solely to ourselves, and maybe one or two other people, whose melody evokes a memory so indelibly seared upon our brains that it’s jarring when it surfaces again. That’s what ‘Alegria’ does to me. From the very first clanging of the bells, I am brought back to a few weeks in Boston, when I was searching for the condo, and falling madly in love with any gentleman who crossed my path. I didn’t know what the song was about, I didn’t read or understand French, but I sensed some heartache and pain at work, something that was supposed to be worked through for healing and heart-mending. I listened to the song alone, as I did most everything in those days. It forced me to be my own best friend. Solitude is soul-shaping, for better or worse.
Perched in its tree and lit with the autumnal splendor of the sun – a splendor that only comes at this time of the year when the leaves are shades of cooked corn – the little gray feather twists and turns in the wind, but refuses to fall from its place. Performing such a delicate balancing act, like an extension of the bird it came from, the feather seems to wink at me, telling me that somehow everything will be all right. I do not know that then. I do not trust it.
Then, just like that, the feather releases. It lets go. It flutters away on the briskest of breezes, giddily tumbling into the sky in whirling fashion.
I wish I could let go like that, but back then I was too frightened.
Maybe that’s what saved me.
I didn’t follow the feather to see what came of it.
It was better to keep it floating in the sky of my mind.
