Free as a Bird

 

Writing prompt for Monday, January 23^rd: perhaps my favorite photo of John Lennon that I’ve colorized in the craziest of ways while listening to “Free as a Bird”.

His look is one of calm introspection.  I imagine he is working out a song on his guitar.  I can appreciate that frame of mind and how it takes you out of yourself and into a world that is full of possibilities.  There are things going on deep in the mind, making connections and weaving beautiful images together, a kind of metaphysical wrestling, mysteries that bubble up to the surface to surprise and delight us as they blossom into our awareness.

I love his full beard in this one, his long hair, and those distinctive glasses that come from an earlier age.  I had those selfsame spectacles for at least a few years, but the metal bridge sitting on my nose dug in too deep and I had difficulties making them sit straight on my face.  My nose is crooked and my ears are not quite level to each other.  I wanted to make them work but reality dictated otherwise (AND someone at a party said I looked like Harry Potter).

I started to grow my hair out a bit in my early 20’s until joining the Army where it was completely shorn but not before my fellow Basic Trainees gave me the nickname “Peace”.  After I left the Army and returned to college I grew it out as long as it would ever get, but then I cut it after a year or two in order to participate in the Army Reserves to help pay the bills.  A beard came later with my conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy but the long hair never returned.

So, the hair, beard, and glasses never existed simultaneously in my young life much to my regret.  But now I am older and have been dipping more deeply into that creative well that I imagine John Lennon knew so well.  If I become morose about my late start to the game I only have to think of poor John taken too soon from the world as I carry on creating in his memory as he haunts my thoughts and inspires me to try and bring beauty to my fellow man.

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