I’m still missing you

Her footsteps disappeared... down the corridor

She won’t be in my arms... any more

Sad and broken

Words unspoken

Linger in the air

What changed the hearts... of our sacred two

Once so together... now everything’s askew?

Were we once?

Were we ever?

Loving true?... Me and you?

Cause...I’m still missing you

And the dream... we once felt was true

Though only echoes remain,

I still miss you just the same.

There’s a price topay ... when you love someone

And the cost of losing them... and a life undone

Was it you?

Was it me?

Or just wanting to be free?

Cold, lonely days... slip slowly by

I can't start over... I won’t even try...

I’ve changed inside

no hope resides

and no one draws me near

But... I’m still missing you

And a love...that I thought was true

And though only echoes remain

I still love you.... just the same

Song lyric

Rochester, NY

6/ 2024

Smoldering in the Ruins... at Giacomo’s Cabin

Prologue

Memory is ephemeral, undependable at best. The older the memory,

the simpler it can seem, the far past less cluttered...as a lifetime of psychological 

rubble becomes diminished.

Of course, memory is selective. To see the true past... one must 

concentrate, eliminating all the filters and smokescreens that the mind has

created to affect a more desirable, though perhaps, fictive history. If

this true past is achieved, recollection materializes, the true narrative

of life...with all its actions, choices, and results at last appears...detailed,

painful, feasibly transformative, possibly destructive. And with it, the

weight that one must carry to the end.

Chapter 1...

The cabin, set on the edge...

in the hinterland,

way up in the hills

as high as you can go,

and still afford,

is where you’ll find Giacomo’s Cabin.

The road to get there, cuts through a green valley stretching south from

the city, leading into the rural countryside. The further you go... the

more peaceful it becomes... and eminently so, traveling along the 

verdant river valley, through scenic glacial country formed 12,000 years

ago, with tiny farms dotting the hills.  Andre often wondered if rural were

people less intense, less seeking than city people? Maybe he’d find out.

In any event, it had come down to this. “He had no place to go, no place

to run to, nowhere to go fetal in. He needed a place to take the time, to

refine and define, the state of absolute chaos and emotional collapse

he found his life in...”

Andre had come to realize what a cold place the world can be. You only

find out who your friends are when you are pushed hard against the wall

and you haven’t got any money, or any place to go.

Who is it...who opens their door and lets you in?  Who says...“take the

time... to sort through the state of your inner self?”

For Andre... it had been Giacomo who had opened his door, offering his private haven to him, 

his lonely outpost... his poetic monastery where he lived amidst Nature... high in the hills...