Write My Name Across the Sky

by Barbara O'Neal

But music is meant to be shared. It’s communication. The music itself taking life through an instrument or a voice, then reaching into the hearts and bodies of other people, and coming back. I never feel so alive as when I’m playing for people, with them. My heart lifts a little.

This is why I am committed to music, moments like this, when I am plugged into something bigger than me, something enormous and wild and full of life, a thing that flows through me and into the world, into the other bodies here, spilling out into the street, offering hope and healing and sparks of joy.

I know how much the ordinary dumb people of the world annoy me, so it’s hard to imagine how much worse it would be if you thought at the speed of light and everyone else thought at the speed of a tricycle.

life is patterns, isn’t it? Patterns and routines create sanity where nothing else can.

The great tragedy of aging is not the loss of the supple body but the illusions we are forced to leave behind, one after the other, like a string of pearls from a necklace. That all will be well, that dreams can come true, that we can always do what we wish, that sacrifice and sorrow are not inevitable.

My gift has always been an ability to be happy. It sounds small until you live in the world for a while.

I’m staring out the window, watching the river shift light streams, gray, silver, a dull gunmetal, and I want to go back in time and tell that little girl that it’s okay. I want someone to do it. Someone to tell her that her eyebrows will grow back.

But life doesn’t care if you like something. It gives you choices. It’s up to you to decide which things are right for you.

Why do people put up with so much, or rather, why do they settle for so little?