Gracias A La Vida

Need I say more? Short of talking on the phone, it is the next best thing to singing.  I know that without self-expression, right now, I could just sink into despair.

And what does it matter if one is writing about the past?  About, let us say for the sake of an example, my geography teacher in high school, Mademoiselle Kaligian. Later she married and became Madame Kurkjian, and always Arpi as her first name.

One of her paintings is hanging on the wall in my apartment.  The one you can see hereinabove.  She gave it to me this past June when I went to visit her in southern California's Glendale city and liked it the best amongst many.  She had been painting oil canvases for a while and her apartment walls were covered with them.  I was really flabbergasted.  I mean I couldn't take my eyes off them and her in total awe and inspiration.  
 
She talked, as usual, and I listened.  We had so much in common and I had no chance to tell her that as she was still talking.  It was a magical moment when out of the blue she told me "but you, you have faith!"  How did she know that?  I guess from the expression on my face as she was telling me how she had, one day, decided not to paint anymore and to get rid of the last remnants of paint in the tubes, she had squeezed out the paint onto a piece of paper or cardboard or canvas I don't remember which.

Lo and behold it had turned into a painting she couldn't throw away.  The paint she was trying to get rid off had a different agenda. Something had been born out of nothing.  She had done some minor work to facilitate its completion and that painting was hanging in her apartment. The "don't give up" painting I recall thinking.

She had also lost 100 pounds since I last saw her at the 75th Anniversary of our high school some six years ago.  After my performance, having for subject school life circa 1950-1960s in Beirut Lebanon, she told me that what I had created was literature.  I never forgot that. In other words, she gave me an A+ that day.  It meant a lot to me because she was one teacher I greatly admired because of her lack of b.s. 

What else could I do upon my return, if not paint?
 

The title song, Gracias a La Vida, written by Chilean Violetta Para and popularized by Mercedes Sosa, is the one I have been working on since then and learning a little Spanish in the process; out of pure curiosity and because I found out how close it is to French, and sometimes to English, albeit simpler and easier.
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