Neil Young Old Man

Love lost, such a cost/give me things that won't get lost/like a coin that won't get tossed/rolling home to you

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

Regarding Cardinals

If a cardinal shows up as your totem, keep these things in mind:

They remind us that regardless of the time
of day or year, we always have opportunity to renew our own
vitality and recognize the importance of our own life roles.

They tell us that that we should be listening to the inner
voice (the feminine) more closely for our own health
and well-being. Since most female birds usually are
quiet and camouflaged, a cardinal totem almost always
reflects a need to assert the feminine aspects of creativity
and intuition more strongly.

Cardinals can reflect a need to be more careful about your diet,
that what you are eating may be injurious to yourself
and affecting your overall vitality.

They represent a need to reflect upon the rhythm of twelve
that is going to become more prominent within your own life.

They often reflect lessons associated with responsibility
and the recognition of the importance of the task at hand.

If the cardinal is your totem, it may reflect past-life connections
with the church, or even a reviving of more traditional religious
beliefs, regardless of denomination.

When they appear as a totem, they do so to remind us to become
like them. Add color to your life, and remember that everything
you do is of importance.


From Animal-Speak: The Spiritual and Magical Powers of Creatures
Great and Small
Ted Andrews

********************************************

Work to do today. Separate and transplant hostas, finish cleaning up my herb garden, plant a bleeding heart I bought a few days ago (it's so lovely!), clean the kitchen, dining room, living room, and hallway--as in deep clean (yuck--I like a clean house--I just don't like to clean!), take a walk, go to the grocery (after I decide what I want to cook tonight), do another load of laundry, and more things I am sure I am leaving out.

I'll have baby Isaac this weekend while his mommy and daddy take a trip to Nashville for a couples weekend thingee. He's never been away from them all night, but hopefully, he'll do okay. He's the reason I need to get all of the floors swept and mopped--I don't want my little sweetness crawling around in all that Molly, Oreo, & Dante fur and all the dust and tracked-in stuff that I don't think about too awful much on a daily basis because I can't see it. If I was crawling around all the time, by golly, I would know what a mess it is.


Right now, it's time for a cup of coffee. My head hurts (yes, still--not as bad as when it started but it's never left me--gets old!).

Harry Belafonte - Jump In The Line.

Time to dance...oh, yes!

It can't be the end


So, I finished reading East of Eden. I read
it voraciously for days (not that long of a book
but I am a slow reader), and when it got down
to the last 50 pages or so, I became a slow
reader on purpose. I didn't want it to end.


I feel something close to empty. Silly, I think,
but some books move me that way. I know when
I have finished my reading, I will mourn not having
more to read or not finding some other something
to read that moves me the way the book I am reading
moves me.

My mother has always read and read and read.
Not just fiction, but a great deal of non-fiction,
editorials, essays, poems.

I could not like her very much for many years and
for various reasons, but I can see now why she kept
her nose in a book and why she feels the need
to pass books on to others.

My eyes roll beneath their lids, wanting to be angry.

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb (1980)

Along the same vein, vain, vane, pain, pane, pain...and it's all going to be okay...

Eels - Novocaine for the soul

This song popped into my head today,and no, I don't have a tooth ache...

Unearthing the Goods

I've abandoned the crosswords, or at least
I try to believe I have. Newspapers are strewn
across the dining room table, beneath the bedside
table, next to the couch. I'll do them this week,
I think, knowing full well the idea of strengthening
my mental capabilities has about run its course,
like a tired old bank mule who's seen her share
of the dank and dark places she'd prefer not
to go again. If only her master would set her free
and let her fart openly in the grassy field
next to the raped and vanished earth! You have
to keep your wits about you, though, as she must
have, all those years of taking men in and out,
up and down, her flanks blackened for life,
her nostrils flared but incapable of bringing
fresh air into her lungs, the pink lost so long
ago. Gotta keep your wits. Haul up another
load to make some man rich--not the man whose
hands pat your face on occasion and give you fresh
oats to eat--not him. But he will do, his sooty
face peering into the darkness of your mule
eyes, peering into the wonder that is your old
body. Each day there is a slipping back into birth--
when you first came out of your mother, wet
and whole, fresh and destined, her milk
enough to sustain. The weaning was not nearly
so bad as the acceptance, the leaning into black
easier than imagined. I can't say why a bank
mule comes to mind as I consider tossing
the papers into the recycle bin. She feels to me
a kindred spirit, this most hearty and delicate
form of a woman, this one who let herself be led
into the forsaken places only a man could take her.