Against the Wind 1980

M. Cole. Malpais. 2010. Acrylic on canvas. 8"x10"

Dad and I shared a lot of times the mistery of how a song could trigger memories. Of course the songs that made us dream were years light apart, his of the forties and fifties, mostly soulful French songs and mine more robust contemporary stuff of the seventies and eighties...that now I see they are getting as old as his stuff compared to what my students and younger colleagues dream with.

Is healthy to pause and remember. Mourning all the dreams gone awry, avoiding the pitfalls of self pity....allowing a soul clean-up to prepare fresh space to receive what life will have in store for a future that will never settle in a soul cluttered by soured regrets.

Bob Segar and his modest masterpiece Against the Wind, released when I was about to leave the teen age was on the radio some days ago and sent me to that scraggly rocky slope, hit by the wind far away in the southern part of Mexico City. A place where my heart flies back so many times when I need to get the batteries charged and the deck washed with healing tears.

It seems like yesterday
but it was long ago
[......]
There in the darkness
with the radio playing low

And the secrets that we shared
the mountains that we moved
Caught like a wildfire out of control
'Til there was nothing left to burn
and nothing left to prove

I have to make a little change... to me is a HE not a SHE :)
but the story is pretty much the same...dreams and words scattered by the wind...until nothing was left to burn.

And I remember what [..he....] said to me
how [...he...] swore that it never would end
I remember how [...he...] held me oh so tight
wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then

Yes, I wish I had seen with super human eyes it was not going to last, that it had never started...but it did and the Master Plan might had needed it to go wrong exactly as it did. Life polishes hard, and soon you learn that if someone from your past is not in your present it was not meant to help you build the future. So -I hate to admit it- ALL is well as it is.

Against the wind
We were runnin' against the wind
We were young and strong, we were runnin'
against the wind

Whee! I close my eyes and I can still feel that wind. Brings a smile to my face. No regrets.

The years rolled slowly past
and I found myself alone
Surrounded by strangers
[That]... were my friends
I found myself further and
further from my home

Home? What is that? I guess the place you set your books, your stuff and your head to rest. But yes, I had to make another change, I DO HAVE friends. And I´m alive because they are with me here to help me walk the road. God bless them all.

And I guess I lost my way
there were oh so many roads
I was living to run and running to live
[......]
Moving eight miles a minute
for months at a time
Breaking all of the rules that would bend
I began to find myself searching
searching for shelter again and again

Against the wind
A little something against the wind
I found myself seeking shelter
against the wind

Running in deep mud. Slowed to a crawl. Romantic to read "if there is not a road, leave a trail" but doing it is another story. Pretty hard and pretty lonely. Yet I have found rest...I have found more challenges...I´m taking them ...I´m still alive.

Funny. Found comfort comforting others, found a shelter being there for others, showing up, serving God thru service....

Well those drifter's
days are past me now
I've got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in
what to leave out

No more time to waste, because now that I´m old -I´ll turn 50 in two more days- I know I´m really short ot time. I hope this year will be full of good surprises. May God keep me expanding continuosly my comfort zones. But to do that not a bit of past bagage can be left.

Against the wind
I'm still runnin' against the wind
I'm older now but still
runnin' against the wind

[......]

I still enjoy the feeling -and the memory- of running against the wind.
Dad shared one day in his late seventies he did not felt old inside. The body was no longer the one of a young man but there was something ageless that had to be tapped to recover fuel to live fully every experience to the end.

Now I know he was right.