Rick

Rick makes anyone feel comfortable. He could meet a notorious criminal and not judge. He nourishes himself on others' thoughts, doings and motivations, especially when foreign to him. And so he engages others, amplifying their excitement for life. Despite exceptional talent and understanding, he is humble, content to let others live and explore their path. He is also unflappable when challenged with a problem or situation, calmly innovating solutions. These qualities converge to make an excellent mentor, one who demonstrates and invites.

Lucho

Lucho sang ballads in the middle of the last century. If you're of hispanic descent, your grandparents may have known him, and an even older song, "The Bardo." In Spanish, a bardo is something of a traveling poet, minstrel, or troubadour, a word no longer used commonly. The song is an old-fashioned tale of unrequited love. A simple tale of heartache resulting from unspoken emotion.



A poor bardo fell in love
with a girl of high society.
His life was that of an unhappy clown
that laughed, wanting to cry.

Wandering after her, the poor bardo would
sing to the orchids where his love dwelt
And the girl, with no idea
that the bardo adored her
married another.

They say, that on a moon-filled night
under a blanket of stars, the troubadour died.
Those who knew him said that on that night
you could hear the laments of love.

And the girl, when she learned the story,
the true story of the poor troubadour,
she said, wailing in madness,
"sorrow is killing me today,
because I loved him too."

"What a shame! Why didn't he tell me?
If I had only known, today I would be entirely his."

Charles

Charlie understood that a grandparent's role is to convey excitement for living. And that, despite all the hells and heavens of life, you can live well, because at least one person has done it before. For many of Charlie's formative years, his mother was in a coma due to a failed experimental treatment. He was by her side every week, while also building his life. Moving away after high school, he rooted in one place for life, with a vision and love for community, in the deepest sense. He loved the simple as well as the political, his family life organized his perspective, he tended the inner and the outer man, a man with integrity, at once common and spectacular.

He was a regular guy.

Silvio II

See first Silvio post for background

Of absence and of you



Now the only thing left is for me to regain the
lover's breath
To avoid maps, to keep to myself
to avoid certain streets,
to forget that a certain book was once mine
or to write a song

And tell you that everything's the same
the city, the friends, the sea
waiting, because of you,
waiting, because of you

I keep going to Tete's, week after week
you remember her place
Today she spoke of rifles dispatching dead men
I know she loves me
perhaps that's why
I sense you in her living room
even though you're not here now.
And you can feel it in our conversation
or maybe it's just that I have the impression
of absence and of you,
of absence and of you

I hope there's no disaster in the reasonable crime
of remembering
or in the inevitable flaw
of nostalgia for dumb little things
Like when I stepped on your feet
in the crowd
and we laughed and laughed and laughed,
late nights without going to sleep.
Yes, it's different without you.
Very different without you.

Ideas are bullets these days and I can't
wear flowers for you.
Today, I'd like to be older and wise
and to tell you
what I couldn't tell you here,
to speak as a tree,
shading you.
Like a book salvaged from the sea,
like a dead man that learns to kiss,
for you,
for you

Silvio

Silvio is a great lyricist, generally unknown in the US. Translations can't approximate his power, but they can try, in this and posts to come. He weaves politics, love, the mundane and the ideal - dissolving, rising above, sublimating any one thought, idea or ideology.

Today, my duty was



Here is a translation, open to constructive suggestions:

Today my duty was
to sing for my country
to raise the flag
to join the fray
today was a moment
rather optimistic
a rebirth
a conquering sun
but you've been missing for so many days
that I want to and can't rejoice
I think of your hair
crashing into my pillow
and I'm such that I can't fight another battle

Today, though I should
have sung with the chorus
I hide from the day
I whisper this alone
What am I doing so far away, justifying
this cruel trick of the senses?

Your delicate lips,
kissing mine,
conquer, own, don't relent
your body and my body
singing struggles
possessed sounds, feverish trembles

Today my duty was
to sing to the fatherland
to raise the flag
to join the fray
and I believe that, perhaps,
I've finally achieved it
dreaming your embrace
rushing to your side


He prefaces the song by saying, "I sung this in a Chilean prison, to a group of political prisoners."

Erna

Erna gardened the way a mother may raise a child - at times meticulous, at times benignly distant, intuitively, dutifully, with gratitude. Her shed was full of possibly useful tools and salvage, her kitchen warm, her home blissfully cluttered, in the sense of someone who has done without, and who appreciates small things. Unwavering, undemanding. She smiles, knowingly.

Walter

Walter, even if he had a nicer home, would prefer to sleep in a shed if that is all his brother had. He tended his mother's land after his father died. He worked for years in a steel mill, raising his family. He then farmed until his body grew too old. He faced illness and mortality with quiet determination. Though he disfavored idleness, he appreciated companied recreation. Such solidarity and humble strength may not produce material abundance. I don't think Walter cared.