My Week Of Thoughts - Day 2 - When the blue butterfly comes for a visit.

This is a series of automated posts since I'm out of town for a week , I'll be catching up with comments whenever I can get my hands on some WI-FI but my interaction will be limited

All of the liquid earnings of the week of thoughts will be donated to @adollaraday.

As time passes my belief in that coincidences don't exist become stronger , this is coming from someone who is quite skeptical of almost everything .. I always want proof and explanation but slowly my need to know why things happen the way they do fades away . Maybe i'm just starting to accept that we are just part of a bigger thing that is above explanation and we just need to embrace it. A few days ago I was told this message again.

Let me put you into context.

As I already shared a few weeks ago , I've had times of my life suffering of depression and anxiety , I have ''given up'' to come back up many many times and each extra scar has given me a little more of experience. I take them for what they are and carry them as part of me , it's my history . There was however a little episode I skipped between me living in Ecuador and moving to Argentina for the first time . I couldn't leave immediately so there was an episode in between where I met a particular person who became my mentor during those days : Herbert Bings .

As I wanted to get away from everything I ended up moving to a little valley called Vilcabamba where my mom was also staying , she was also in the look for a place of peace.. so I followed her. She was actually living besides a mountain called ''El Mascarón'' .. in a small house practically in the middle of nowhere.

Our temporary place besides the ''Mascarón''.

What originally I though would be a couple days turned into weeks and I just spent my days there living a simple life, working the land with my Stepfather and of course.. my acoustic guitar was with me. I don't remember writing any music here but I liked to play to have some release.

Then one day I met this person, who happened to come for a visit , he was extremely tall, talked slow and very gently and was very amused with all the animals that roamed around my mother's place.

We ended up chatting as I taught him how to feed the little cows and I found out he was also a musician , he was retired though and was just spending his days living a simpler life.

After a while , he visited regularly and we became friends , later I found out he was a very important drummer back in germany , he was the drummer for the HR Big Band for many years and played with many of the artists I admire, you can google a bit of him , the list is quite long.

Some of the recordings he made include a Big Band Steely Dan record that I really like, here's a snippet I found:

I then had to ask , if he was a really successful musician .. why was he at the little valley just working land and helping raise animals? Well , he was terminally ill and he had just accepted his fate and moved towards of enjoying a simpler life until his time came, a very brave thing to do..and it also surprised me as he looked strong as an ox. So.. i just took the news lightly and changed subject.

We became really good friends afterwards , chatting daily , talking about life , music , sometimes even playing a little on a little percussion kit he carried around. He slowly encouraged me to get back into music , into loving the art again and told me I was too young to retire like this and still needed to go write my adventure , it was clearly not my time yet.

So , I went back to Guayaquil and eventually gathered enough courage to move to Argentina , I was going to pursue my dream of music. Of course I stayed in touch with Herbert and wrote him about all my adventures, the things I was learning , what i was up to .. he would always answer and send me his approvals , and signed his mails as ''Don Heriberto''.

A couple years went by and everytime I was in Ecuador I would go visit him and talk about my adventures .. as it was inevitable , his health deteriorated over time and last time I visited him he was already on a wheel chair , he had also moved to the Manglaralto zone where my mom lives now , he was a lonely man and he wanted to be close to my family which he considered as his own. At some point his health deteriorated very quickly and I think he knew his time had come as one day he called me over the phone, I was in Guayaquil .. That phone call was his goodbye call , he said he didn't regret anything , was glad he could meet us all and one particular phrase that stuck with me ''I'll come visit, think of me when you see a blue butterfly''. He hung up.. and passed away the very next day. My next visit was to his grave. It was a heart wrecking moment.

Time passed and life went on , it's just the circle of life.. I wrote him a song shortly afterwards and I think it's the only song I openly say who I wrote it to.

I even shared a bit of the story for the Open Mic Family and performed it once more:

https://steemit.com/openmic/@pechichemena/steemit-open-mic-week-58-original-song-dicen

Ever since that day, I've been visited quite a few times .. and I always think of it as a ''sign of approval'' , life's way of telling ''yes , this is where you should be .. keep going''.

I can recall a few ones strongly.

A couple years ago I embarked on the adventure of saving a 100 year old tree that was chopped of in the coast of Manglaralto , mom was extremely pissed of why people would do such thing to build a fence , yes.. a fence... So , following her crazy lead .. with 15 other people and a truck .. we transplanted the tree on the entrance of the house .. it was just a log we tried to save..hoping it would survive.

finally transplanted, I took this picture :)

I named the tree ''Grandma Bertha'' because I am basically an idiot but the moment we planted it.. a blue butterfly appeared and rested on the top of the tree for about a minute.. I smiled and it took off...

Bertha grew her first flowers last year..

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Family picture , Bertha on the right.. yes.. the name stuck :D

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The last two years I lived in Guayaquil I started to frequent a small island just outside of the city called ''Isla Santay'' , It was easy to get there as they build a bridge and it became a regular place for cyclists.. I started going there to space out almost every week and yes.. when I got really deep in the mangrove I sometimes saw some of these blue little friends.. not everytime , but I just liked to go and see if I could see one.. Get some ''soul charging'' and come back to the craziness of the city.

Some of the nature around Santay

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Being a musician can be tough and specially back in Ecuador when it is very underestimated still , songwriters and artists have a hard time getting noticed an supported .. and I've always admired the artists brave enough to embark in such adventure of trying to make their art a living.

One particular day there was some news about an Ecuadorian songwriter releasing an album , her name is Luz Pinos and she was doing some crowdfunding to make it happen, I remember listening to some of her music and liking it and was happy when she announced the release of the album.. to my surprise... this was the album:

Luz Pinos - Blue Butterfly

I then heard the song ''Mariposa Azul''.. It struck a chord in me..

The lyrics said ''Since you left , since you are not around.. a blue butterfly flies in every place''

I still can't listen to this song and not get emotional.. It's just close to my heart now. It also makes me remember my grandfather, who I dearly loved .. so , it hits a lot of emotions for me.

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A couple days ago I finished recording my first single of that album I've been working on so hard for many months and was a debt I had with myself for years.. The percussion session of that song was the last thing to do, I finally recorded one of my songs after all these years. Shortly after we finished my friend Carla Vera called me and said she was around my house, so I invited her for a coffee and a chat.

We had not talked in a couple months , she's been busy , touring with her band Olvidé San Telmo and such and since she left Steemit some months ago I had lost a bit of contact.

She had just come back from a tour in Chile and told me all of her adventures over there , I showed her how the album was coming together and chatted for about an hour. Then she had to go, it was a short visit.

Before she left she told me "I have a little thing for you , it's quite dumb but I bought it as a little souvenir in Chile and thought I should just give it to you "

And then she gave me this....

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Life is full of surprises.. and it never ceases to amaze me...

Thanks for reading
Pechi