Life by the Drop - Stevie Ray Vaughn

Life by the Drop - Stevie Ray Vaughn

I love this song and it holds a very important story in my life.  One I haven't shared. But on this my 50th birthday, It is one of my most special songs. This song is the story of the day I found out I could live MY life.  So no details on this chapter, but I share the song that moved me. Lana, I don't know how you got lost, but I could not turn 50 and not think of this song.  Only you know the story. Peace be with you.


God Danced the Day You Were Born - Guy Forsyth

Thought, if you believe in God, a God, Any God...then your life was a gift.  It occurs to me that I would never want to squander such a beautiful gift.  Love the life you live, it is a GIFT.

Stop Children What's That Sound - CSNY

When I was 15 or 16, I stripped and waxed a liquor store, including bathrooms to get this Album.  You can't be my age and not have this song take you back.  It was a radical time.  It seemed scary at times.  Now what seems scary is that I don't hear teenagers caring about much of anything.  They are so busy being tethered to an electronic device that they are consumed by their own lives.  That is my rant as a newly old person.  But to be honest I wouldn't strip and wax a floor for 20 albums.  Maybe I am younger than I think LOL

Watching the River Run - Loggins and Messina

I can remember listening to this song in my late teens, just as I was beginning to realize that school days don't last forever.  I would soon learn that those friends would fade too.  This song is the hope of love starting new, "Don't feel alone anymore, when we are together I got a lot".  It also waxes nostalgic... "Further and further from the things that we have done, leaving them one by one".  I think my life is at the part where it says... "listening and learning and yearning, run river run".  I am willing to wade out in the water and let it take me where it wants.  Run River Run!

I Only Want the Things That Matter - Guy Forsyth

I wrote a post on this song some months ago, I was not comfortable with it and hit delete.  But I am ready now.  I have taken a step I did not think I had in me.  I now see with out the step, I would not be who I want to be.  SM Thank you for giving me your GRACE....It's pure SOULSHINE!


Turning 50 needed more than one song.  I put in one per decade...and even that was a paring down.

Summertime - Janis Joplin & Guy Forsyth

Summertime - Janis

Summertime - Guy

I live in Texas.  We have had a record setting summer. We are on our 25th straight day over 100 and and have accumulated an additional 10 days or so that hit the century mark for the summer...so far.  Add to that a record setting drought and it has been one hot and hard summer.  The headline in the local news about a week ago said "A Hurricaine might be a good thing for the Texas Gulf Coast"....say what???  Leaves are falling off trees and grass has long been withered. 
One might think it has been officially summer for a while now and I might agree, but it was officially SUMMER this week at my house.  Every year you reach a period sometime in late August when you can climb in the shower and never turn on a drop of HOT water, and still feel like the water is too warm.  That day was Tuesday of this week.  Now really what does one do if you sweat in the shower?  Seems to defeat the purpose.  The hard part is September is still truly a summer month.  I think September is the hardest.  Having grown up well north of my present location, September is the month you start to get cool mornings and a few cool days.  NOT in Texas.  September is like a 2nd August.  Which reminds me of a Texas weather joke...There are two seasons in Texas, Summer ........and January.  
This is our cabin fever time.  We all race to the comfort of our AC.  We don't want to go out.  Grocery shopping is a drag, lugging all that stuff to and fro to the car and then again into the house.  Besides who wants to eat when it is this hot?
I have had my fair share of Sonic Strawberry fresh fruit slushies and have come to love those frozen peach margaritas they sell at the grocery store.  I keep a big old thick stem glass in the freezer.  I grew up drinking RC colas at my grandmothers house out of that glass.  They came out of soap powder boxes. It seems to add to the treat! Holding that really cold glass adds to the heat relief.
Hurricanes, heat and frozen drinks...it MUST be SUMMERTIME

Why Walk When You Can Fly - Mary Chapin Carpenter

I remember listening to this CD during the winter, a cold one in Kentucky.  The kids were still young.  I worked part time and I was happy being a mother.  It was the first thing I found that I loved beyond my limits. That was a simple sentence, yet when I saw it as it appeared, I was hit by the depth of the of it deep inside. I loved those cold days where we stayed in our jammies all day.  We fought Gargoyles and watched old Abbott and Costello movies on VHS. I made lunches that had shaped sandwiches and laughed watching the two of them be BOYS. My sanity was to have music floating throughout the house.  I seldom do country, but this CD seemed to settle well.  Winter music is so different from summer music or spring.  Fall is also distinct. But Winter always was a little slower, a little deeper.  I don't remember what I thought in response to this CD, but it does stir me now.  I came across it by doing some online reading.  The good thing of no TV is that I do spend more time finding things to enlighten myself.  No I am not searching for self help, but just reading about sailing or how to bake a tart.  Sometimes I write things in my BB to look up later.  One on the list right now is "Are there fewer lightening bugs now than when I was a kid?".  So in a meander of some other searches I came across this song and decided to listen to it. I was thrown back to the days of my early parenting years.  Today, I can hear the words and have time to listen and think about who I am.  Who I want to be.
I think this song says it so well.  I know that in the coming months I think my new yardstick question will be "Why walk when you can fly".  I have been trying to think about a radical shift in how I live.  I spend without thought.  I am taking care of business, but my life is not leaving me room for my passion. I want to travel.  More than anything I value experiences.  It is my passion.  I am not talking staying in a hotel.  I want to have a more organic experience.  SO this song reminds me...With the rest of the time you are given, why walk when you can fly".  Do I really want the vase or do I want to have 8 dollars to travel. Do I really want a 40$ pedicure or Nicaraguan summer? I don't know what I will do yet.  It is on my mind.  This song helps me think about it with a point of view.  I don't want to take when I could be giving. So I guess I have some thinking to do.  Some more reading to do.  I love the line in the song, "In this world you have a soul for a compass, and a heart for a pair of wings".  So really, does that vase give me anything? I have to think what do I want, really want.

The last lines of the song make me think.  It was 20 years ago I was raising children listening to this song as background noise in the middle of happy chaos.  Now it reminds me it is time to be in a new happy chaos. 
"There's a star on the far horizon
Rising bright in the azure sky
For the rest of the time you're given
Why walk when you can fly"

Theme Music - Tree of Life

 

I went out tonight to see Tree of Life with one of my friends.  I need to see it again.  I have come home and my head is tossing information back and forth to find my take on a movie that is more like a book.  I say like a book, because it seems littered with themes and signposts to help the viewer question themselves as they decide what they saw, felt, wondered.  Each viewer will see something different, ask something different.

My friend did not care for the movie.  For me it was perfection.

Clearly the beginning lays out that we have two main thoughts on life.  We have God, Grace, and Love, (Creationism) and on the other we have Nature, Challenge and Logical Rhythms (Evolution). How you build your story will be up to the viewer based on their own lives and emotional path currently.  The music above is the same.  It has rhythmic circles, followed by billowy slowed passages, that come together in the end, intertwined.  Finally,as in the music,  Jack finds the balance between his logical constructing self and his emotional self...granting himself forgiveness. Grace. Love. God (Concept Fluid). 
I wasn't sure about how his brother died.  My friend seem to think he killed himself.  I should have asked her why she thought that.  I had drank a lot and I must confess although riveted...I had to sneak out for a ...slight break.  Maybe I missed something.  I thought he had been killed at war.  I assumed that as it looked like the man delivering the envelope wanted to leave it and go.  I assumed he knew it was "the telegram".  I need to see the movie again now that I grasp it. I have so many things I need more thought on. Oh how I loved the way the film conveyed the pure love of a first born in the first months of life. It made me remember the awe of my love as a new parent. The film leads you to lay your own memories out sparking your own heart.

The use of water was interesting.  The beautiful waves seemed full of life and promise.  The same water brought death to a child.  The views of the heavens in all the glory of Hubble photos sat next to the radiant sunflowers growing afield. Are these proofs of a wonderful God, or has nature wrought its self in perfection?
And lastly the movie seems to beg the viewer to question what does the choice of Grace or Nature mean to the individual.  Making one look at their own circumstance for answers. If Grace is the path, we are part of something bigger than ourselves.  We are created in the image of love and love flows through our lives (the mother).  If we choose nature, we live in circles that spin out of logic, and challenge.  We are somewhat insignificantly thrown in the mix.  Random. Cold. (the father).  The film seems to suggest Jack finds his balance.  But first he had to look at his self and ask... am I who I want to be.  His father has to come to terms with his own choices.  It reminded me of the the song
Cat's Cradle", his son had grown up just like him.  He had no great love or compassion for him.

Ahhh but these are just a few of the conversations taking place in my head. I have got to see this one again.  Only I think I will wait until it comes out on Netflix.  I want to see it with out the background slow snore heard in the theater. 

And to my GF....you can pick the next one.  : )

What I so wonderfully loved about this movie is that it has made me began a dialogue with myself.

Losing My Touch - Keith Richards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMxa_Xebbrw

Losing My Touch

I love this song.  I know it is melancholy, but it is beautiful.  It is one of those songs that just sounds lovely.  Sometimes when down, I might go down that other road, but most of the time I just hear the beauty in this song.

I love the gravely-ness of Keith Richards.  I can also see how aging to a rock star might lay a heavy layer on ones being.  Knocking on 50's door myself, I can't help but identify with the reality of aging.  I for one see it in good ways.  I am losing my touch with a lot of things, but most of them I am glad to lay down.

I don't want to be 20 forever.  There was so much to learn, some of it, much of it the hard way.  Things were always needed.  Acquiring would be the word of that decade.  At 20 I was already years into a marriage.  I would become a mother twice.  I would go back to school and earn a nursing degree. Bought my first car, followed by a  house.  It is a blur.  NOW I know that.  I apply that to today and I try to remember I don't have to run anymore and that I want to be in the moment.  I learned that from my 20's.

I was 30.  That decade is the biggest blur in my life.  I remember little specifically during those years.  I lost my parents near the beginning of that decade.  I raised kids, worked as a nurse in critical care and thought ...well I thought a lot of things.  I listened to none of the truths in my heart.   Instead I listened to my pride, my vanity and my ambition.  I don't have to be ambitious anymore and I want to just do a good job.  Knowing that takes the pressure off myself to be perfect.  That pressure has made me an ugly person at times.  At 50 I can bring my art of nursing to my job and let the rule makers rule. I care more and worry less. I learned that from my 30's

There was 40.  40 had some good points at the beginning.  The kids  were almost grown.  Money was stable.  I started the decade good but push came to shove.  He pushed and shoving off seemed an appropriate choice for me.  In the middle there was years of fighting, screaming, hating, holding on.  The intensity was brutal most of this decade.  It was a crazy roller coaster ride.  So at 50 I seek sanity in myself and those around me.  I have learned, I don't like the roller coaster as much as I once did.  I learned that from my 40's.

So yeah, I am losing my touch.  I am embracing the calm.  Call it old, call it what you want.  I call it happiness.

Lean On Me 2.0

Lean on Me - Bill Withers

It is late, 1:30 am and I have a full robust day tomorrow.  I start my day with a meeting...8:05.  So there is no room to call in late.  I have several meetings and need to run on my lunch break to go pick up prizes for an employee wellness program I chair.  It is one of my many assignments.  Then back for afternoon directors meeting, and then a post work day retirement party to be followed by a board meeting.  Hopefully back home by 8:30 tomorrow evening.  I say not to complain, it is to give reference to the words yet to grace this page.  

So it is late, and getting later and I have a full-tilt boogie day tomorrow and I have something to say.  I have the dearest of friend and I am trying to learn to support at a distance.  The bad part about that is doing comforts me. So this evening and several evenings of late...I try to learn how.  What I end up doing is watching a movie and wishing she could sit on my couch and watch it with me.  We could eat chocolate and live in la la land. But for now we can't and I need to learn.  I am supposed to learn.

Tonight I started with some pandora and song after song brought her into my heart.  I laughed when I remembered being her nurse when she drank too much at a Guy Forsyth show.  And I didn't begrudge her one drop.  I was glad then to have her back.  Sometimes a girl has just got to party til she pukes.  She did! She lost her shoe in the bar.  She talked Nasty to someone on the phone and was just trashed.  It was thinking about that, when the above song came on.  It made me think about how we lean on each other in our own ways. 

Lord knows she carried me over some damn dark days.  She also dealt with my tail chasing; although I know it confounds her.  So I guess that is friendship; taking each other as they are, when they are, where they are.  Life is just a big ole ball we volley back and forth.  Sometimes you spike it and sometimes you fault on a serve.  A good girl friend backs you up ... so tonight, I am leaning on my friend only she didn't know we spent the evening together.  I just spent it thinking, weaving her in my evening.  It wasn't a sad thing, it was just making sure as I do from a distance I don't let her be too far from me.   We have some good memories.  I was leaning on those til we can make some more.

And so I make my way across a set of days and will be ready with Dinner for her to take home. And I am learning to have balance.  Today I worked in the garden.  I am growing sunflowers and everytime one blooms I remember the awesomeness of creation.  And I learn.

But I hope she knows when my work plate empties out in about a week...she may have to take my cooking two nights a week.  I am learning...but I am pretending to be a slow learner.  hehe....

Night Aine!

How Sweet It Is (To be Loved by You)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSQdRz-HlJw

How Sweet It Is - James Taylor

I have been listening to this song for a lot of years.  I never really gave it a lot of thought until today.  Today this song says what I have already said in several texts to my Superman.  So I think the song says it best.

"How sweet it is to be loved by you
How sweet it is to be loved by you

I needed the shelter of someone's arms and there you were
I needed someone to understand my ups and downs and there you were
With sweet love and devotion
Deeply touching my emotion
I want to stop and thank you baby
I just want to stop and thank you baby

How sweet it is to be loved by you
How sweet it is to be loved by you
It feels so fine

I close my eyes at night
Wondering where would I be without you in my life
Everything I did was just a bore
Everywhere I went it seems I'd been there before
But you brighten up for me all of my days
With a love so sweet in so many ways
I want to stop and thank you baby
I just want to stop and thank you baby

How sweet it is to be loved by you
How sweet it is to be loved by you
It is just like sugar sometimes

You were better for me than I was for myself
For me, there's you and there ain't nobody else
I want to stop and thank you baby
I just want to stop and thank you baby

How sweet it is to be loved by you
How sweet it is to be loved by you
It's like jelly baby"

I have been struggling to figure out my feelings for him.  Todaymy blog is about what I know.  This man loves me!  This man is better for me than I am for myself.  He doesn't need me to define what I feel for him.  He can tell me he loves me, when he knows I will not be able to meet those words with reciprocity.  So my words are in this song.  Every word in this song is from me to him. 

Superman.... how sweet it is to be loved by you! And thanks for saying it, meaning it and repeating it when you know I can't! <3