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

I Miss My Mary Mae - Guy Forsyth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YAG8ogh5hM&playnext=1&list=PLDEB6A1AE55D4ADB4

GRACE: Kindness, favor, mercy, benevolence, leniency, blessing, honor, beautify

I said to my sister-friend the other day that grace comes from everywhere.  Since then it is like I am so much more aware of the abundance of GRACE provided in life. Today began with a violent cry.  I think that is everything in that category!  I went to work and found delight in children today.  Children are a balm of GRACE. 

To continue with that child/balm/GRACE theme, it is Thursday.  Thursday has a rhythm in my life.  It is my day I eat the same lunch.  Every Thursday I have grilled catfish, macaroni & cheese and mashed potatoes, extra tartar hold the cocktail sauce.  After work I load up my dog and drive to see my college student son.  I cook a homemade meal.  I meet him at his apartment and we eat together.  We do nothing special.  We just remember we love each other.  He is my baby so we have a close relationship.  He is the most soothing thing I have ever known in my life. Children are a balm of GRACE.

When I got home I decided to listen to some music.   I had a little playlist that includes songs that I have sat and listened to with my sister-friend.  I wasn’t sure I could do it this evening, but I did and as has been the habit I found layer upon layer of GRACE in the songs of Carolyn Wonderland and Guy Forsyth.  I hope you dear reader will connect to the link and watch this amazing song.   It caught me deep when he sang those feelings from his heart.   I can’t really share that; it is a little close to the bone.  I am not even sure I can really look at it right now. But I know this wonderful song; about the awe found in a daughter gave me peace.  Children are a balm of GRACE.

 What I know is today, children have held me.  

This song- This artist made me smile, when I was struggling to do so.

I am thankful for those things that can soothe me and hope the universe will continue to fling these little life preservers my way. 

Lean On Me - Bill Withers

Lean On Me

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPoTGyWT0Cg

I have been in a growth spot the last 6 months.  I have gotten past the failure of my marriage and I am coming to terms with the fact that a failed marriage does not make me a failure.  I have come out whole but a bit dysfunctional.  Well let me rephrase that. I have realized my dysfunction is partly to blame for the craziness of my marriage.  I am a fixer.  It would seem a lovely trait, to want to help others.  It isn't, or at least it isn't in the warped way it has roosted in my life.

I married a man that needed saving.  My soul had a jarring jolt when I realized one of my secret truths was that I married him not out of love but a sense of duty, to save him. I owed him that honesty.  Fuck that, I owed myself that honesty. It has taken a series of events to see that duty,  honor and commitment are poor substitutions for love.

I wrote in an earlier blog, entitled Trouble, about a friend that was too much work.  I love this friend dearly, but she does not love herself and I found it exhausting to fill that hole. This same friend does not love life and she harshly criticizes every conceivable thing.  Actually I have realized I have an abundantly large number of friends that NEED a lot of maintenance.  I have been weaning myself slowly from the drama.   This has been big. I have begun to see that I am lovable without having to be a fixer.

I have also been able to realize that I am a good friend in a pinch.  I am the one who won't say call me if I can do anything.  I am the person who will bring you dinner every week when you didn't ask.   If I know it has been hard, I will call you up and say pick a day and I will plan a treat.  I work on their time schedule.  I don't tell them I was up til two cooking the night before because I heard or knew this particular day or week was kicking their ass. I might not tell them I have been bailing our 3 other people who are in crisis at the same time.  I try to make it look effortless.  I try to do for them without presenting my help in a way that puts them in a position to have to do the old "You shouldn't have".  I pick the things that are not glamorous.  They are the tasks, the grut work, the in the background kind of deeds.  I don't need the glory, but at the same time I have needed the glory I give myself.

So I am trying to look at myself and prune some dead spots.  I can see my fixing is a strength and a weakness. You don't marry a man because he needs to be fixed; it is a poor substitution for love.  If you surround yourself with those in need of repair you can work on them, instead of yourself.  I also know that I good at giving.  I have an ability to see what will help and a delivery which is disarming and does not require the receiver to feel they are really asking for or receiving anything unusual.  Which brings me to this actual song and why it tells my song today.

I have a friend who really never NEEDS me.  She allows me to be gracious in my giving, but I never feel like she is one of the people I carry.  She in turn has carried me.  She was my life raft right after my divorce.  She kept me busy.  She introduced me to Superman.  She reminds me of my sister.  She has the same demeanor as my sister. I find her rational and calm.  I trust her always.  I never question her insight as it will always be well thought out, balanced and the one point of view that I could not find when I was chasing my tail.

 I took to pruning my dead wood and was making some positive steps.  It was a project that would be classified as well underway.  As is always the way in life, just as I was becoming confident in my self improvement regarding this fixing issue, I am needed.  I am trying to bring the good things forward and leave the warped things behind.

And this is where my world and hers collided.  My lovely friend, who is like a sister to me has had so many tough days.  I have watched her navigate major challenges over the last 2 years non-stop.  It has been to the point where you find yourself on the other side of "what else?".  I have learned the hard way that being able to say "what else" is a luxurious place to be.  You know life has been hard when you get to the point where you would never say "What else".  You can only arrive at that destination after you have had a long series of just plain ole bad. One morning you wake up and you realize you don't dare throw your hands in the air and shout to the heavens "WHAT ELSE?".  You get that there are probably still a shit load of buckets of crap that can be flung on you.  My friend quit saying "what else?" like anyone who has taken a multi-destination hike of misfortune. Sometimes in life everything that can go wrong does.

So I spent the evening with my sister-friend.  I planned an outing.  I did the things I am good at.  She did the things she is good at. We talked a bit about what is going on in her life.  We talked about life in general.  We were who we had always been, but I think we were who we will be too.  She is fiercely  private and her current struggle is such a personal private one. She doesn't like to need but I think I heard her agree to allow herself to be needy.  At the same time she has heard my need to be a healthy giver. In a few words she seemed to negotiate a new contract between us.   As usual with her, it was simple and understated.  And as is true to who I am, I saw the complexity in what lies behind what was said.    It wasn't a complexity of negativeness, but a complexity of grace. I say that in a way of generosity of grace towards myself (maybe a future blog will be needed to explain this).

So for now this is the song that tells the story in my life.  My friend who is full of grace has mine.  I don't know what she will need from me but I am confident I can do what she needs me to do.  I am also confident that she can do what I need her to do.  I promise to give in those ways I do it best and she promises to gently guide me when I need to do it in a why that works for her.  I promise to be able to hear her say what the boundaries are and she promises open a gate when the boundary has her blocked from receiving. So me the giver and she, who needs controlled taking, I think agreed without really agreeing to a contract between us.

I don't know where she is going with this current challenge but it looks like we may not be in Kansas any more.  She is standing there waiting to find out if she will need to seek the wizard behind the curtain for some potion like answer.  If she is off to see the wizard I am ready to walk beside her like the scarecrow, the lion and the tin man. She has my knowledge, courage and love. If all is well, I will be the first to help her celebrate. Regardless, in our silences, words and deeds she can lean on me... or  not depending on the way it plays. : )


Lean on me when your not strong.
I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on.
You just call on me sister when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on.