I have never understood…

 …the allure of Pink Floyd.

This band seems to be popping up a lot lately. I saw a list of the top six classic rock bands, and I agreed with all of them, but Floyd. I saw an elderly woman (anyone older than me is elderly haha) wearing a Pink Floyd shirt. And then yesterday I heard a song of theirs called “Fearless” on the radio. 

My friends and I never listened to Floyd. It always felt like background music for people that liked to get seriously high. To me, the band has no personality. You think of The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin, and they exude personality. The members make an impression.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t pick Roger Waters out of a line-up and I don’t even know the other band members’ names.

Am I to assume that people still listening to a Floyd still like to get seriously high? 

The only memory I hold of listening to Pink Floyd was in the spring of 1975. I was going to a computer school, and we had to write codes, type them on punch cards, and run them through a computer that was so large it filled a room. The school only had one computer, so when the end of the quarter came, everyone was vying for computer time to be sure their program ran efficiently. It was our “final.”

Our young teacher, Gary, decided we should spend a Friday night in the gloomy building downtown Cleveland so we had total access to the computer ourselves. We weren’t required to come, but he made it like a party. Lots of snacks. And a record player.

Gary was always competing with the other teachers to prove we were the smartest. 

Someone had brought a Pink Floyd album, and that is the only time I listened to Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety. It really fit with being on the second floor of a grungy building at 2 o’clock in the morning, Euclid Avenue below being fairly devoid of traffic, and the streetlights shining through dirty windows. (In the 1970s, no one went to Cleveland at night.)  In that atmosphere, I thought the music as pretty good. However, I never bothered to listen again, not even when it was rumored you could put it on and watch The Wizard of Oz and it was a perfect soundtrack.

So yeah, all these years later I still do not get the allure. I do, however, like the cover.  It’s pretty darn cool.

A Portal?

 

I slept better last night than I have in a while, and today I feel like myself again.  

This graphic came through on an email from Valarie Kaur of the Revolutionary Love Project. A day ago, I would have felt defeat regarding this idea. Nothing felt possible. That is how low I was sinking.

There are continued challenges with Jim’s health, and so far no answers. I am going to be calling him in a few minutes. I believe in the possibility of change, and at the same time am willing to accept whatever is. My job is to hold the space for healing, and perhaps I haven’t been doing that too well.

For some reasons I cannot understand, this is the way. I just need to go with it.

4 Lines

 

Here are 4 lines I wrote in my journal today:

Things can turn and change

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over

I can be positive and strong

I can accept things exactly as they are

How It Is

 Scrolling through Facebook this morning, this quote hit me hard:

Immediately I knew that once again I was off the path of letting things be as they are.

I want more energy. I want Jim to be stronger and well. I want him home. I want, I want , I want…

Destructive desire.

All unhappiness comes from wanting things to be different than they are.

Let it go.

Let it go.

Let it go.

Choose Joy

Today is one month since my accident.

My attention was drawn to something that has been sitting on my dining room table along with all the other items Margie and Paul got out of my wrecked car.

This magnet sat on the back of my silver Tucson. I’d make note of it every time I was loading groceries, or I came out of my classroom at the end of a long day.

One month ago, this magnet on the back of my car was the last thing I saw out the back window of the ambulance as I was carried to a world unknown and unplanned.

These past 30 days have been a continuing lesson in choosing joy. It seems the lesson can never be learned deeply enough.

Question Marks

Inspired by “Word Fog” by Rumi

Words, even if they come from

the soul, hide the soul, as fog

rising off the sea covers the sea

I’m a writer

and I use words

and I like to think

I’m speaking from

my soul at times

but perhaps it 

isn’t possible, maybe

something is obscured,

something that can’t 

clearly be said.

Like the way I feel

today, like I cannot

truly grasp the

moment. All I can

do is concentrate

on the next step.

My life sometimes

feels like a maze

I’m picking my

way through.

I don’t have words

for all the questions

I have about the

future.

I just have question marks.

 

“And yet the books…”

 This poem inspired by “And Yet the Books” by Czeslaw Milosz.

And yet the books will be there on the shelf, separate beings

My best laid plans to read them stolen from me

Concentrating on fiction now is particularly tough

I do hope someday to return. And when I do,

The books will be there on the shelf, well born

Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.