I was still at university when I listened to a jazz pianist playing this melody
Autumn Leaves
Did not realize at that time, many years later I would be listening to it, the above on a youtube video, in Paris, France
Yves Montand had gone by then, along with his beloved Simone Signoret .. did I not see them lying next to each other at Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris?
Pablo Neruda might have questioned, he wanted his Matilda Urrutia all alive and well next to him, rather than lying in silence next to him in a cemetery..
But in Isla Negra, they both lie next to each other, facing the ocean..
as he had sung, of all the things Love alone is inexhaustible..
I wanted to send this song to a friend of mine who send the autumn leaves lying in the pavement on her way to work in Mashhad, Iran
one emotion leads to another. I thought of the song Penelope..
when did I first hear it? was it in Miami with my latin american colleagues or was it in the drunken distance of Baracoa while sitting on the malecon looking for the emptiness left behind by the stars in that dark sky?
Love, at least what we thought was Love in our youthful frivolity, came by so easily under those tropical nights (Ayn Rand said Tropical Nights are like hammocks for lovers)
Life has presented me so many lovely spots in this world ..Melbourne the town that I longed to call my home, now buried under mountains of memories.. London Paris Brussels Kingston Havana Miami and there is Baracoa, the gilded age of youthful exuberance surrounded by friends and innocence and affection and songs and poetry.
Suddenly I thought of the song Viente Anos, written many years ago by a cuban woman, Maria Theresa Vera and made popular by another great cuban singer, Omara Portuondo..
The above group is from Tirana, Albania, our brothers and sisters so far removed from our latin hearts and tongues but sharing our sentiments..
So on this late evening, as the clock is about to strike midnight, on a pleasant late autumn in Miami, the mind carried a little cup of happiness from that distant land where once my father had worked treating peoples physical wounds, without realizing one day that very same country would create emotional wounds in his son.. who seems to have been born a century or so later or in another planet...
Such is life, friends and lovers and those others whose fragrance lingers on .. and I thank Iran now bleeding from its multiple wounds sending breaths for my respiration.
Lights for Iran..
