Song

This blog is over-songed as of late, but searching through old CDs for something "new" to listen to on drives about the town I stumbled across this old gem. This one goes out to my mom, who once spent hours on a long drive to Tennessee trying to teach me how to do algebra in my head. When that utterly failed, she taught me how to harmonize instead. My gift to her (and the world for that matter) is that I usually confine that lesson to the space behind the steering wheel.

"Never mind fortune.
Never mind fame.
I don't wear diamonds
I don't drink champagne
I've learned a lot that I don't want to know
Take me back to where we were so long ago.
Take me down easy,
Take me down slow,
By the side of the road."

Song

"This is the room one afternoon when I knew I could love you
And from above you how I sank into your soul
Into that secret place where no one dared to go."

Hm. Old loves, big smiles, and learning that although sinking into someone's soul may be a little like quicksand, you can always be the King of Carrot Flowers.

Um, kinda ready for the nostalgia of the holidays to shift a bit. At least in time for me to spend less of my present thinking about presences, passed and future-going. Or lack thereof. It is so windy outside, but we have no snow. Otherwise Christmas walked on tiptoes this year, and it was divine.

Poem

How to Tread Water

You must remember always
That water is stronger.
But if you are capable of asking,
It will bear your lightness up.

Do not waste time convincing yourself
That water is your friend.
It has no desire for friendship.
For it already knows
All the secrets flowing through you
And into the space of others,

Spreading into chasms
That you will never see.

Nor tell yourself that water is your enemy.
In taking your secrets, it trades you life,
And it has no choice but to withdraw.
For water must leave when it is time
To flow through other births that call it.

Know instead that you are both
Its host and its guest
And you may not strike it
Or thrash about in frustration
When its responses fail you.

Be polite. Water will be kind.
Be kind, and it will be gentle.
Gentle, and it will become
A listing tiger upon which you may ride.

EEG

Song

"Fish in the sea, you know what I mean.
River runnin' free, you know what I mean.
Blossom on the tree, you know what I mean.
It's a new dawn.
It's new day.
It's a new life for me.
And I'm feeling good."

Song(s)

"The wandering eye that I have caught
Is as hot as a wandering sun
But I will want for nothing more, in the garden
To start again
In the hardening of every new heart but one"



"We came by the boatload
And were immobilized
Worshiping volcanoes
Charting the loping skies

The tides of the earth left
Us bound and calcified
And made as obstinate as obsidian
Unmoving sable eyes"