Songs I Love in 88 Words or Less: "Salvation"

“Salvation,” Elton John & Bernie Taupin
 
The latest installment in my little series—for my mom on her birthday.  (It’s not the first time my card has arrived a day late. )

At the bottom of the hill I  met a man with a cane, carrying a pack of Dunhill Blues.
“I’m going to quit,” he said, "when I get to the end of the street."
“Good luck,” I said.
“I’m going to quit today.”

I saw my mother fall at the bottom of the hill.
She couldn’t talk, eyes shut to light
the path
She squeezed my hand when she got there:
A developing Polaroid of a shy ingenue,
a violet on her first day in the world.






I don’t think I’ve shared my own video here before—it was a limited release, and supposed to be as close to a minute as possible : )

How Sweet Hearts Can Be

I would have posted this sooner, but I couldn't come up with a good-enough title. I figured the only way I'd think of one was when I wasn't thinking, and there it was, whispered in my ear in the middle of a dream at 3 AM in the morning last week.

Those same bright stars in heaven above
Know now how sweet
sweethearts can be

Of course. One of my favorite lyrics ever, the ouch of the three "ows" softened by a double dose of turbinado… So simple, it takes lesser poets 5 more lines to say not even quite that. I fell right back into the most satisfied sleep, so, so thankful for those kinds of gifts from the universe…

That's probably one reason why I run, because running has lots of gifts to give. And running doesn't mind if you're me or Meb--you plan well, you put in the time and give up that last tiny bit of control your ego thought you had, and it'll take you where you need to be…wherever that is. It brought Meb to the Boston Marathon finish line before everyone else, and it brings me, even though I'm at the complete other end of the natural talent spectrum, to this…

Two weekends ago I was in Central Park, trying to find the calm in the dappled shade of the bridle path, the nothing-but-flatness of the reservoir loop…anything but the outer loop, which I had been on quite a bit in recent weeks. It's hilly, which I don't mind, but nasty hot in the bright sun, which i do. So I avoided the outer loop like the plague, until, of course, I stopped paying attention to how crappy I felt for a second and found my feet leading me there….

Who drew all those chalk hearts in the pedestrian symbols painted on the road that show which way we're supposed to be going? It doesn't really matter, and it doesn't even matter why they wrote "88" in each of the hearts on said pedestrian symbols from West 90th all the way to… wherever they ran out of chalk on the east side.

It matters to me because my mom was born in 1926, and because the last birthday she celebrated was her 88th on April 16. And just in case I didn't quite get the message that those who have left their bodies are always in our hearts, this one kept coming up in my iPod shuffle…

Wordless Wednesday: Free to Fly

These words don't really count since I wrote them awhile back, upon visiting the Butterfly Pavilion and Insect Center in Denver:

Butterflies live for only a week in the wild, but in that week, they've got a lot to do. As they get older, their wings just sort of fall apart. We saw them just sitting on top of these big slices of banana. Imagine sticking your nose, your most sensitive organ, in a flower and letting it, and yourself, stay there for hours. Is it like those people who swim in big vats of jello? Or freezer pops. Geez, I hope flowers don't taste like freezer pops.




Sweet freedom, whispered in my ear



Um, here's what's written on my copy of the album on which you'll find this next song: "To Suzy/All our love/The Cowsills/you've got a great/dad."

Wordless Wednesday: Monkey Do

I was watching this guy hanging out on the East River early one morning this week, and I swear he held this pose for at least 15 minutes. After awhile I started to feel all antsy in the arm area and had to stand up and do it, too. You know what? He has a point. Pre-flight feels right.

Alternately, if this doesn't suit you, you could always take your cue from the 83-year-old ex-dancer in Elyse's college yoga class. "I interviewed her for a paper," reports Elyse, "and she told me she still goes to the bathroom with her arms in the air to keep her posture in check." If you try that one, please let me know how it's working out for you.






If the phoenix bird can fly, then so can I

Wordless Wednesday: Honky Cat

In honor of Global White Cat Week at Romeo The Cat’s blog, heeeeeeeere’s Derrick!



And ‘cause I stole the title from EJ, here’s one of my fave songs of his, back when he was da bomb. This little clip makes me so melancholy for a long-ago time and place I couldn’t have known anyway. Sigh.