Seven Guitars

My apricot hued guitar lies on the couch beside me...resting from a recent encounter...a faithful female presence...always
ready to give me a chance to let out how I feel...or binding me together again...when I am jangled by lack of sleep...or the
rain coming down for one day too many. I have been really blessed by having such a comforter in my life. It has been hard won...There was much material poverty on the river I grew up on, and as a child, although we sang a lot...my home was
bereft of musical instruments..that is...except for a period of two weeks. Some cousins of mine, gifted at creating things,
started making musical instruments. They gave me a four string wooden banjo they had made. For two weeks I hardly let it
out of my sight...until I had to go down river to play in a cricket match. When I returned I noticed my siblings looking at me
sideways, as if something unpleasant had happened, and they were trying to get their nerve up to tell me. Finally...one of them took me to the back of the house, and pointed to fragments of wood, curling strings, and wooden pegs, scattered on
the grass. I was told that a visiting nephew, in a fit of anger, had ended my two week love affair with my wooden banjo,
wielding a machete. By the time I arrived on the scene of his wantonness, he was long gone. It took another ten years and
living on another continent...for me to acquire my first guitar... in Toronto...with my first monies earned after arriving in Canada...at the age of twenty. Perhaps, having been denied being able to make music for so long, fostered a great fervour
in me, and painstakingly I dug in to teach myself, by ear, to play the guitar...impatiently by-passing taking lessons...except
for one...after which the teacher gave me scales to practice at home. I immediately saw the writing on the wall, and never
returned to experiencing the limitations a teacher might put on me. Since that time...people have come and gone...but my
guitars have been a constant in my life. Now...I live in the midst of a harem of guitars...seven of them to be precise...waiting
on my beck and call...through rainy and sunny days...through the changing chapters of my life...responsive and reliable
companions...for all seasons. Quester.