for HT 2007

A man came to live in a blue house by a sea, a sea that changed from steel grey to kelp green, from glass to rollers and breakers in minutes. He was ageless. To some he was like a wise grandfather, while he seemed a wide-eyed boy to others. I know this because I listened so raptly to his tales every chance I got, and I watched the reactions of the fortunate others who came to sit for awhile in the sunlight of his words.

And what did he know about? What did he tell with certainty and what with wonder?

Many things. How long the road was from his night’s lodging to the endless highway; how brightly the stars shone over the islands under the Southern Cross. The way his skin felt from riding all day on the English moors, and the weight of the camera on his neck after hours of capturing the light playing over barn boards. The man in the blue house by the sea knew these things with the sureness of experience and the understanding that a traveler’s life brings.

Amazement would fill his eyes as he spoke of those he loved so well -- his beloved, his heart, for surely she knew him as no other ever would, as his partner and mother to his children. The firstborn, so early and small, could not stay with them for long. Fragility is never harmed by love, and loved he was. His cherished girl child, golden and kind, with an incandescence of mind and heart, how he swelled to tell of her protection of the earth! And be assured, no father ever believed more fully in the desire of his son, to make his guitar resonate for the sheer joy of the sound in the world.

And yes, he talked of many things with wonder and reverence --  of books and songs and flavours and puzzles, of myths and melodies, dreams, and things, and people, lost and found. Of glasses raised and promises, of tears and smiles, and secret dreams. Of Timbuktu and the Mekong Delta, of Gibraltar and Dublin and Baja California.

I think he knew about quality, for he surrounded himself with such an abundance of it. Not material things, mind you, but quality people, quality living, quality pursuits.

The man who lived in the blue house by the sea understood, too, what Ms. Rumphius’ grandfather told her about needing to make the world more beautiful. Not in some grand way like a painter, for I am sure he coloured outside the lines or got the paint all over his clothes and hair whenever he took up a brush. But, oh, this man knew Beauty and that she startles us, and will dance with anyone who is brave enough to ask her.

The man who lived in the blue house beside the sea has already made the world more beautiful. Even if he does not know how to keep doing so, I have seen that he has the eyes, heart and mind to keep finding ways, and the courage to ask Beauty to dance.

  Cate Smith

  June 19, 2007