Ambition | Teen Ink

Ambition

August 7, 2011
By Claydub PLATINUM, Fredericksburg, Virginia
Claydub PLATINUM, Fredericksburg, Virginia
35 articles 0 photos 9 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;You are not wrong, who deem<br /> That my days have been a dream;&quot; - Edgar Allen Poe


This old man; gray and shriveled, from living as many days as there are stars in the sky,

Pressed his hand, hard, against my left shoulder,

And gazed at me, with eyes that had seen the setting of the sun, thousands of times over,

And he gave me knowledge; knowledge, I could never gain from a book.

He spoke to me of his friend, Allen Hancock; how he tried to use money to buy his lack of a musical ear.


He told me, how talent cannot be learned, or gained through practice.


He told me, how he would give anything,

to learn the music he so dearly loves.



He told me, how ambition is as valuable as a sea swelled with gold;

yet as priceless as the ink that pens the last words of a person you love.




He told me how the sea had become lost, through the acts of millions of careless men.

And how no one could stop it. He told me, "Change begets change."


He told me many dozens of things I will never forget.



And when his hand left my shoulder, and he gazed off into the starry sky, with his eyes, that had seen all;

His mind, which never had failed to remember any word, phrase, or formula, that had ever passed through it,

This genius of a man,

with his eyes--his silver blue eyes, that had seen all--met my gaze once more, and spoke to me words I will never forget:



"If only I had as much talent as you."



And these are the words by which my life will be lived,

For if this man, who had lived a life as long as mine, six times over,

That had passed through childhood as a prodigy,

That knew more things than I could ever wish to know,

And had done things I can only dream of doing,



If this man; this gray, old man.

If he was the one who stood in front of me...him, bedazzled, by my talent

Than my future holds much more fortune than I think.


The author's comments:
Inspired by a talk with an 81 year old man (The best friend of Allen Hancock, actually) I talked with recently; I played the piano for him, and I remember him standing there speechless. Later me and him talked and he told me about himself; his photographic memory, and how he finished high school at age 14 because of it, how he loves poetry, and how he join the marines right before the war ended. how he married the world's best accordion player, who he's been married to for 56 years. he told me so many things, and i was amazed at how he could remember it. He told me the first poem he had written at age 5, he only read it once before reading it to his class then throwing it away, and it's been over 70 years; he read the poem once, and still remembers every word. he skipped five grades in two weeks. He set a record for the highest exam score at the college he went to; he was only 15. Anyway though, i couldn't believe that he thought that i had talent. so did his wife (the best accordion player in the world at age 16). she was so impressed. I just thought it was an inspiration to become a concert pianist, which, I already am.

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