Wednesday, August 11, 2010

THE SAGE




I have lived an interesting life. One of the many things I did when I was younger was to be a "roadie" for a small, local band when I was in high school. They played at Knott's berry Farm, Disneyland, and other local venues. Eventually, they got noticed and were offered a contract by a major label. They were going to go out on tour as one of the opening acts for a hugely successful band. Circumstances prevented me from going with them, but I had many a fine adventure in the time I worked set-up for them.

That world, at least back in the early seventies, was a wild, yet wonderfully terrify place. Being a roadie meant that you were backstage around all of the acts before and after the shows. You saw everything: the drugs, the sex, you name it. Pretty heady stuff for a sixteen to seventeen year old. One of the concerts changed my life, however, in a way that I thought could never be repaired.

It was at that concert that I heard Greg Lake, of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, perform the song,"THE SAGE", for the first time. The music was haunting enough...but the lyrics crashed into my heart with the force of a tsunami:


I carry the dust of a journey


That cannot be shaken away


It lives deep within me


For I breathe it every day






You and I are yesterdays answers


The earth of the past come to flesh


Eroded by times rivers


To the shapes we now possess.






Come share of my breath and my substance


And mingle our streams and our times


In bright infinite moments


Our reasons are lost in our rhymes.

I don't believe in reincarnation: I didn't then, and I never will...but the lyrics still spoke to me...they spoke of a love so timeless, so perfect, that only God Himself could have ordained it and arranged for it to occur. A love that God, as the Master weaver, had taken the countless threads of countless lives over thousands of years...and had woven them so that two people could meet at the exact moment in time for that perfect love to burst into flame. A love so perfectly planned that...all reason would be lost trying to explain it. All hope of escaping its power would vanish...and only by being totally and completely consumed by it...could you ever truly be who and what you were meant to be...

I thought that I had been in love before I heard those words. But, as the music coursed through my veins, I knew that I never had been...and felt the horrible, crushing certainty that I never would. A love like that...well, it couldn't be meant for someone like me...

The years passed. I was raising my two little girls by myself. I dated, but not with a purpose. I knew that I would never marry again. I had made up my mind that if I couldn't have a love like the one described in this song, I would rather have nothing...

And then I met her...

The very first time I saw her I knew that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. When I looked in her eyes, it was as if I had looked in them before...a million times over a sea of infinity...the touch of her hand was as familiar as it was exciting...the taste of her lips as comforting as it was intoxicating...

We have been married for almost a quarter of a century now, my beautiful Cherish and I...in some ways that first glance seems like yesterday...in others, a billion lifetimes ago...

Our streams will always run together...now, and throughout eternity...and for that, I will be eternally grateful

I love you, Cherish...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really love the song, dude.

You're a lucky man. She truly is a gift.

Micaela Bizet said...

Incredible...I hope to find a love in my life like you two have. That was beautiful.

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Christopher Blake is a loving husband...devoted father...minister...crippled ex-cop...screenwriter...novelist...actor...and more than a little rough around the edges...