To live is to fly

A Sunday. Hot. Humid. Just the way I like it. I think I'm cashing in on my alleged father's Italian genes. I love hot weather. It doesn't bother me the way it seems to bother others. I hate the cold and the wet and the dark. When it gets this hot, all I have to do is think about snow, and I just settle down. I always joke and say I'm solar-powered.

So, sitting on the porch this morning reading the New York Times and trying to figure out what to do with this beautiful day, I finally decided not to go to a play and spend money even though I should--(should!--that awful word rife with guilt)--even though I should stay on top of the local theater scene since I'm going to school and spending so much money and time (did I mention so much money?) to be a part of local theater scene. I always say that an artist has to live life, and then bring what he or she finds in life to the stage or the canvas or to music, so today I decided to to stay at home and live a life and write and read for my class and play guitar. And not spend a dime. I'm reading everywhere about the Great Recession. (I don't know why we keep dancing around this and wonder when we're just going to realize it's probably even worse that the 1930s.) I learned a while back how to enjoy simple and cheap and free. Sue and I have so much in this apartment, and people don't really understand what we do all the time since we don't have a television. (So, what do you do?)

A mockingbird moved into our neighborhood, and is the last bird heard as night falls.

Today in the Times I read how important Facebook and Twitter is to our diplomatic effort. Please, people falling into the trap (again) that technology will save the day. With people, you have to continue to do the human thing.

Yesterday I spent a glorious day on the beach with my oldest, who has seemed to have adopted Rhode Island for her home. It's a beautiful place, all that coastline with such a deep sailing history. We get along, after all these years of being apart. In my counterculture class we read how so many people want to turn back the clock, revisit a time when things were "better." That's a natural human response but it's impossible. And it's a response that I think is ruining this country right now. We have to embark on new paths; learn from the past but the times call for a new way of life.

With my daughter I know I can't turn back the clock, I can only go forward from here, and that's probably the right and true thing to do anyway. I know, if she could, she'd turn back the clock to when she was happier, when there was a regular family with a mom and a dad and a sister and a dog living in a house in the suburbs. She needs me right now, needs my advice to help her move toward the future. I think there are some people in her life who'd she'd be a lot better off without. Not bad people; just nothing great about them--they're the hoi polloi, though I'm sure they think otherwise about themselves; I'm sure they've been told all their lives how great they are, how smart, funny, intelligent, witty, good-looking (on the outside, maybe) by doting parents and superficial friends. And I know I'm prejudiced, but Allison is a catch. She's a terrific person who has a fragile side thanks to her father and there are those who are too damn clumsy, stupid, or just plain uncaring to deserve her company. And I feel it's my responsibility to protect her. I told her yesterday that she deserves to have the kind of friend that she makes for others.

I've turned into a crusty old SOB; someone who doesn't suffer fools. I've wasted too much time (Livin's mostly wastin' time/I waste my share of mine/But it never feels too good/So let's don't take too long). I've always heard the clock tickin' and always tried to live my life knowing that it all could end tomorrow. It's too precious. And I hate wasting anything much less time.

To live is to fly

Living's mostly wasting time
And I waste my share of mine
But it never feels too good
So let's not take too long
Well, you're soft as glass and I'm a gentle man
We got the sky to talk about
And the world to lie upon.

Again, and again, and again...I wish I could write like this...

To Live Is To Fly

I keep writing these words on this blog...dang, I wish I could write like this. The combination of poetry and musical ability that songwriting demands is daunting and scary for me. Just learning. I just approach it as fun, but I want to do it so well, and sometimes it seems time is just running out. I'll either be in a home or living on a park bench somewhere, my fingers barely able to wrap themselves around the neck of a guitar. Sometimes I think it would be poetic to die sitting upright on a park bench, frozen in the snow, guitar in hand, a la George Mallory.

Won't say I love you babe
Won't say I need you babe
But I'm going to get you babe
And I will not do you wrong
Living's mostly wasting time
And I waste my share of mine
But it never feels too good
So let's not take too long
You're as soft as glass and I'm a gentle man
We got the sky to talk about
And the world to lie upon