Night Train (The Accidentals and Dar Williams)

[Hallie Bateman]

I have mentioned that I've been having trouble sleeping, crazy when I was always the person who, when my head touched the pillow, I was out in 30 seconds and never knew another thing until eight hours later.  I've been grappling with this for a few months, now at the stage where I've worked myself up to a state of dread and anxiety, because I can't predict whether my night will be restful or restless.  I brainstormed different bedtime routines, and tried out a new (old) one last night, which was successful.  Will continue to implement, and share when it feels I have found my way back to Dreamland... 😍

Friday means nothing to a retired person, but there is still joy in anticipation of Pool Day at 11 a.m. with Nancy, writing in our family journal to pass on to Sarah, and Colin's swim lessons at 5:30, not to mention the weekend and getting together with a long-distance friend who is coming into town tomorrow... 💓

As is tradition, five items below of beauty, interest, and humor to brighten your day/weekend/week.  Enjoy!

~ We Have All Hit a Wall:  Confronting late-stage pandemic burnout, with everything from edibles to Exodus.

~ Dan Berrigan's Hidden Works of Mercy:  The well-known peace activist spent much of his life bringing comfort to the dying.

~ Up on the Met Roof, an Artist Is Taking Big Bird to New Heights:  Alex Da Corte, known for provocative, brightly colored installations, will showcase the beloved “Sesame Street’” character at the top of the Met this spring — but with a twist.

~ A Cup of Jo:  Founded in January 2007, A Cup of Jo covers fashion, beauty, design, food, travel, relationships, motherhood and lifestyle. Our readers are enthusiastic, style-conscious women who love shopping online and discovering new things.

~ Healing, Knowing, Seeing the Body:  The human body has the potential to serve as a universal point of connection. The feats it can achieve, the wonder it can inspire, and the pain it can endure offer possibilities for uniting us through shared experience. Yet, the body is also individual and intimate, shaped both by cultural context and personal circumstance. It serves as a site of violence and debate, providing visible ways to identify and label difference that can lead to widespread injustice. This exhibition emphasizes the unique and profound contributions artists have made toward understanding the human body in all of its complexities and contradictions. (thanks to CT!)

SONG:  Night Train by The Accidentals and Dar Williams ["Night Train," the Accidentals tell The Boot, hopes for healing and a better future. It "became an anthem ... for the work we have to do, for the hope and light that exists ... It's the rally call," the band explains.]

BOOK:  Directions: Really Good Advice for Getting from Here to There by Hallie Bateman

POEM:  One Train May Hide Another (sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya) by Kenneth Koch

In a poem, one line may hide another line,

As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.

That is, if you are waiting to cross

The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at

Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read

Wait until you have read the next line--

Then it is safe to go on reading.

In a family one sister may conceal another,

So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view

Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.

One father or one brother may hide the man,

If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.

So always standing in front of something the other

As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.

One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide

The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another

On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;

One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia

Antica one tomb

May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,

One small complaint may hide a great one.

One injustice may hide another--one colonial may hide another,

One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath

may hide another bath

As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.

One idea may hide another: Life is simple

Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein

One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory

One invention may hide another invention,

One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.

One dark red, or one blue, or one purple--this is a painting

By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,

These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin

May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician

Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but

One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.

A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides

Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in

A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag

Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.

In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by

the mother's

And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker

May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee

Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love

or the same love

As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers

The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"

Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"

And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the

Garden of Eden

Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.

Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.

When you come to something, stop to let it pass

So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,

Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory

Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,

The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading

A Sentimental Journey look around

When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see

If it is standing there, it should be, stronger

And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore

May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk

May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and

One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs

Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the

foot of a tree

With one and when you get up to leave there is another

Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,

One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man

May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.

You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It

can be important

To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

QUOTE:  "When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in.  That's what this storm's all about." ~ Haruki Murakami

I Know Alone (HAIM)

[thanks again to Lesley Anne Numbers for this brilliant graphic!]

About six months ago (maybe more, maybe less), I ran across a saying that became my mantra:

Whatever you
Are not changing, 
You are choosing.  

Read that again.

It helped me transform some bad habits into positive motion, and I stayed on track for a good while.  Then... coronavirus (dum dum dum dum!).  I continued my focus for another two months, but have recently found myself straying from the path, even falling into wallow and roly-poly modes, two of my biggest downfalls.  Woe is me.  What's the point?  Where's my purpose?  I wrote to a friend the other day:

"It's raining again here.  How appropriate.  Almost two weeks of daily downpours.  You are the unfortunate recipient of my fatigue:  coronavirus isolation; marital relations; social injustice; missing live music, browsing the library shelves, hugging my grandbaby, going to Publix instead of having strangers do my shopping, sitting in a booth at my favorite Thai restaurant to enjoy veggie Panang curry.  Do you yell at the TV when people shake hands? ("no, you can't do that now!").  On the few occasions I am in the car, and see people driving while wearing masks, I wonder if I've just been dropped into a nightmare/science fiction scenario, and pinch myself to wake."

Time to recalibrate.  Much to be grateful for.  So many blessings.  Started last night with a Dar Williams livestreaming concert, celebrating Patty's (her manager's) birthday, in which Dar played "deep cuts".  Wow, what a setlist!  I was invited, and eventually migrated over, to the Old School Dar-Listers watch party, connecting with dear friends I've had for decades, forever-bonded over our favorite singer-songwriter.  I am committed to carrying that spark of joy back into my daily life, and adding in more yoga, more stretching, meditation, more phone calls with long-distance friends and family, walking, even leisurely (gone by the wayside because of my sciatica), natural VitaminD, whether at the condo pool (socially-distanced, of course) or the grassy area in front of our building, kinder words, deeper understanding, open heart/closed mouth, more radical self-care, increased vulnerability, letting go of past hurts.

Forlorn/lonely... begone!


[updated at 5:30 p.m.:  I uploaded this post a bit after noon today, and since then, after doing much thinking, as well as having a productive conversation with a friend, I realize that so much of my angst comes from *struggling* with the times we're in.  I am attempting to push back against an immutable situation, a *global* pandemic... clinging to my old life, fighting "the new normal", when what I really need to do is to find acceptance (I swear I had it at one point!).  I keep talking about "the other side" of this, when there is still so much uncertainty, and no one knows where we will land, and what it will look like.  I seriously need to stop drawing a line in the sand, visualizing there and here, Point A to Point B... and rather look at it as a journey, circuitous at best, winding along with perhaps no immediate plan in place, other than to connect the dots One Day at a Time, making the smartest decisions possible ("do the next right thing", as Glennon would say), and maintaining a Buddhist attitude of acknowledging there is pain and suffering yet striving toward non-attachment to the outcome.  I feel better already...  :-) ]

P.S.  Another joy-sparker tomorrow night:  Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile, Eric Church, Kacey Musgraves, and Bill Murray will remember the life and music of John Prine during an all-star online special on Thursday. Picture Show: A Tribute Celebrating John Prine streams June 11th at 7:30 p.m. ET via Prine’s YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch.


SONG:  I Know Alone by HAIM (lyrics in the link; thanks to my son Rob for the heads-up to this song... 💓 )

BOOK:  On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard by Jennifer Pastiloff

POEM:  Quarantine Day 35 by Jaime R. Wood

The online coronavirus survey asks
if you’ve experienced hair loss
and you laugh because just yesterday
you took brand new clippers to your scalp
and sheared off enough hair to help someone
with cancer feel human again.
Your friend told you over Zoom happy hour
to hug yourself to trick your body
into feeling less lonely, so you wrap your arms,
right to left and left to right,
across your chest until your hands reach
your shoulder blades and you can feel
your heart beating inside you
as if it belongs to someone else,
but you know that hasn’t been true for a long time.
You stay up all night watching hospital dramas
because you want to know who will live
and who will die.
And one morning you wake to find out via email
that one of your students died in her sleep.
All day you tell people again and again,
“She had kids. She had kids.” Plural.
But it turns out she only had one
five-year-old daughter. Singular.
But what does it matter?
Every child is a universe.
And one morning one small girl in Portland, Oregon
woke up without her one very important mother.
Sometimes my hands shake with all they cannot hold,
and I don’t know how to measure what it means
for time to pass. Which simile will do?
Like a heartbeat?
Like a million fine hairs falling from a head?
Like a mother who slept through the night
and then stopped, her universe carrying the weight
of her through all the days of her life?

[Jaime R. Wood: “The ongoing event that we’re all experiencing right now is social isolation in an attempt to protect ourselves and our loved ones from COVID-19, and some people, like me, live alone, and so the isolation is profound. Last week, I learned that one of my students died in her sleep, and of all the things I knew about her, the thing I kept thinking about was the fact that she was a single mother and that her kids were young. I knew that, but I couldn’t remember how many kids she had until someone told me that she only had one, and at that point, it didn’t really matter to me. The loss is great, no matter how you calculate it. The loss of this one woman, and my feelings about it, can be multiplied many times over and applied to each of us. We wake up and fall asleep to loss, and there aren’t adequate words to measure it all.”]

QUOTE:  "And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about." ~ Haruki Murakami