From the recording Chiaroscuro
Many who know me know that I was a missionary in Italy for two years. I’ve always looked back on that time fondly (even if with rose-colored glasses). I think I tend to do that with any significant period in my life, and, as I get older, I find that there are more and more of those times to look back on. In any case, almost 13 years after returning from my mission, I went back to Italy for the first time in 2014. As I walked the streets I used to walk as a near-child, I was struck by how familiar everything felt. It was as if I could have turned the corner and they would have all been there. I missed them. The buildings, the smells, the shops, even some of the people were the same…they had been going on for the last 13 years without me, and I showed up a time-traveler wondering where everyone I knew had gone. I wished I could have been there with them again, but maybe knowing what I know now, and knowing that I was going to be okay, because I don’t think I knew that then. In spite of its challenges, I continue to hold that time among my most sacred of memories. Thank you for sharing that moment with me. It matters that you were there. It will matter that I was where I am in this moment.
How did it go so fast?
Lyrics
Down at the crossroads there
I stopped to stare
and heard a chorus in my mind
It sang your melody:
A memory
I hummed along and smiled
but we can’t go back
It’s a one-way track
Down this road that
we call time
and I hope you will
remember still that
you were here
and so was I
And then much further down
I turned around
To catch a glimpse of where it goes
I heard your echo say,
“Those were the days.”
but everybody knows
that we can’t go back
So did you change the way
you spell your name?
we were silent consonants
back there on the edge
of carbon’s stage
counting all of our diamonds
and holy, yeah we were holy
and wholly oblivious