Loving Life on Lark Street

This past weekend, my friend Ed and I drove up to SUNY Albany to visit our girlfriends. Well technically I drove up and Ed navigated, but it’s convenient for us to car pool because not only are our girlfriends friends, but they also live in the same apartment. We all used to work together. We don’t anymore but it’s cool that we’re still connected after the job is over. We’ve all had days where we’ve cursed our jobs and wished we could just win the lottery. If I didn’t work at my job, I wouldn’t have met my girlfriend.  I wouldn’t have met my friend and he wouldn’t have met his girlfriend. I’m sure there are people that would still rather win the lottery. But there is no amount of money you could pay me to go back in time and miss the opportunity to meet the Love of my life. I couldn’t imagine my life without my friends either. The value of life should not be measured in dollars. Some of our most valuable treasures are the connections we make with other people.

I’m the type of person that believes the world always has lessons to teach us if we are willing to learn them. Perhaps it is the English major within me, but I can’t help but to notice that life is not so different from literature. At first, when I started to read, I just enjoyed the stories. I read all the words and that was it. I was content. But as I got older, I was taught to recognize themes, motifs, characterization, irony, symbols, foreshadowing, flashback, setting, etc.  I was taught to recognize the interplay between the devices. The more I learned about the devices at work within the stories, the deeper my understanding of the stories became. I find that it is the same way with life.

On Saturday, we attended Lark Fest. “LarkFEST is Upstate NY's largest one-day street festival. The event features hundreds of vendors and two stages of music with both local and national headlining musical acts. With an estimated 80,000 people descending upon Lark Street,” (Albany.org). Among all those people, I managed to run into a lot of people I knew. I was surprised. I forgot that not all my friends were seniors and that a chunk of the ones that were stayed on to go to graduate school. Plus, I realized that a few more of my friends came to visit Albany for Lark Fest. We hadn’t planned to meet. We all just kind of bumped into each other and were like, “Wait, dude, you’re in Albany this weekend too? Awesome!” 

Lark Fest as an event was awesome too. The weather was beautiful. The music was great. The crowd was radiating happiness and excitement. The street was transformed into a bazaar filled with skilled artisans and vendors lining the sidewalks. There were sculptures made of forks, an exotic jerky hut, psychics, acupuncture and massages, tie dye t-shirts, jellyfish encased in glass, duct tape sculptures, kitten adoptions, and more. The cuisine included Jamaican jerk ox tail, fried pickles, kettle corn, curry chicken, fruit smoothes, pad-thai, gyros and falafel, pork dumplings, tacos and burritos, crepes, hot dogs, and more. We required about three or four walks up and down the block to take it all in, stopping to try all the different foods along the way. Everything was delicious. I love to sample different foods.

Usually, food is my favorite part of these types of festivals, but this year, I was most captured by an artist. There were many artists on the street but one in particular inspired a certain feeling within me. Art amazes me. Art is music for our eyes. When I look at a painting, I just start feeling a certain way. It’s not just images or words. It’s something beyond that. It’s something about how the colors get along with each other. It’s something about how the artist felt when she was creating the piece. It’s something about what the artist wanted you to feel when she was creating the piece. We can do our best with words, but paintings find a way to transcend the barriers of the subconscious, while words must always gain our permission to read them.

I walked into the stand and looked around. The first time I walked out without buying anything. But I needed to return. There was something that had caught my attention, something that made me feel something, but I wasn’t sure what it was. She had a few different paintings, but a common theme in some of them was the silhouette of a humpbacked man playing the flute. Something about that man seemed so familiar. When I asked the artist about it, she told me he was Kokopelli – a thousand year old Native American deity known to bring good luck, springtime, rain, trickery, fertility, and the spirit of music. He sounded cool and I felt connected to him for some reason so I bought the painting.

As soon as I walked away, I remembered where I had seen him before. I took out my phone to check. I was right. I had drawn a painting just a couple of weeks earlier containing a figure that strongly resembles Kokepelli (Check out the pictures above and judge for yourself). Weird. I can’t watch this happen and not see it as a symbol of good luck and good fortune to come. I recognize that this was not coincidence, but synchronicity. When I ran back to the stand and showed her the picture, she agreed wholeheartedly. So explained how the symbol had stuck with her for some reason as well and thought it was special I had drawn his likeness without knowledge of his character. We exchanged information and she inspired me to start displaying my artwork somewhere. My friends and family tell me that my art is cool and interesting but it’s different to hear it from someone who sells the stuff. I felt grateful and humble for this synchronicitous connection.

The rest of my weekend was filled with fun experiences as well. I had the opportunity to become closer to my girlfriend’s friends and suitemates. I was able to re-connect with some of my old suitemates. I saw some friends I had no idea would be in the area. I stopped by my old job and said hello to people. Everywhere I went, I was met with a warm reception. It was a beautiful feeling. It was a beautiful weekend. Of course I am always sad to leave my girlfriend, but I can’t complain too much when we’re having the time of our lives when we see each other.

This week, let’s meditate on learning to read life as we read literature. If we can learn to recognize the themes and interpret the symbols, we can make connections with new characters that will help us to develop. We can see that there is often much meaning in-between the lines. We can see that what seems to be random coincidence may be a crucial device within the story. It may be a symbol. It may be a sign. If we can become aware of themes within our lives, we can gain deeper understanding of our experiences. So this week, look for the themes in your life. Look for metaphors and motifs. Learn to understand life’s devices so that you can understand the deeper meaning. The more aware you become of your own story, the more control you gain over how it is written.

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