-I- [jukebox] You'll never fly as the crow flies.
Christopher Hortin
The gold and the rainbow,
Nothing panned out as I planned.
They say only milk and honey's gonna make your soul satisfied,
Well I better learn how to swim,
'Cause the crossing is chilly and wide.
Twisted guardrail on the highway, broken glass on the cement,
The ghost of someone's tragedy,
How recklessly my time has been spent.
They say it's never too late, but you don't get any younger,
Well I better starve the emptiness,
And feed the hunger.
Up on the watershed, standing at the fork in the road,
You can stand there and agonize,
'Till your agony's your heaviest load.
You'll never fly as the crow flies; get used to the country mile,
When you're learning to face the path at your pace,
Every choice is worth your while.
Then there's always retrospect to light a clearer path,
Every five years or so I look back
And I have a good laugh.
You start at the top, go full circle round, catch a breeze,
take a spill,
But ending up where I started again
Makes me want to stand still.
Up on the watershed, standing at the fork in the road,
You can stand there and agonize,
'Till your agony's your heaviest load.
You'll never fly as the crow flies; get used to the country mile,
When you're learning to face the path at your pace,
Every choice is worth your while.
Steppin' on a crack, breaking up and looking back,
Every tree limb overhead just seems to sit and wait
Until every step you take becomes a twist of fate.
Up on the watershed, standing at the fork in the road,
You can stand there and agonize,
'Till your agony's your heaviest load.
You'll never fly as the crow flies; get used to the country mile,
When you're learning to face the path at your pace,
Every choice is worth your while.
-Indigo Girls, "Watershed"
==
Today has been one of my reflection days, primarily because I
decided not to attend class this morning due to the lousy weather.
It didn't seem like a good idea to risk a one hour car ride in a
blanket of fog on roads covered with black ice for just one class.
Both the idea of making the choice not to go and the remembrance of
a car crash I saw the last time the roads up to Vincennes were bad
prompted me to dig up this song from my monster CD storage container
and give it a listen. And wow, I love this song.
Truth be known, there are very few Indigo Girls songs that I *don't*
like. Both Emily Sailers and Amy Ray are truly gifted with words,
each in their unique way. But of the two, Emily's lyrics tend to
touch my heart more due to both their calm intelligence and
sensitive optimism. Both these aspects are especially apparent in
this song.
For me, life is a fun thing to think about. I'm endlessly intrigued
by how life seems to alternate from a course of events pre-planned
by a higher power to a meaningless mass of chaos, and back again
when you least expect it. But it's when you look back on life that
you can sometimes see the chances taken and missed in those
pre-planned events, or patterns in the chaos.
Today, in this life of mine, I am not where I expected to be, but
then again when I was younger I wasn't really expecting anything. I
didn't do a lot of looking forward back then, and I'm still coping
with some of the decisions that I made earlier in that frame of
mind. Regardless of expectations though, I am quite happy to be
alive, and all things being considered that I can think of to
consider, I am in exactly the right place at the right time.
I am letting go of all the "should-ofs, would-ofs, could-ofs,
didn'ts"; those are just phantom possibilities of the actual events.
Through all of the triumphs and foibles that make up my past, I see
in myself a course of development into who I am today.
And today is all we really have. Our view of the future is clouded
by the past, and our view of the past is clouded by time, but today
we can move forward and choose where to go. There are no actual
shortcuts, just the ways that look easy, and looks are deceiving.
Those roads can just as easily take you around the long way, just to
lead you right back to where you started. But heading full circle
round isn't a bad thing, assuming that you've gained something by
the journey.
My favorite part of "Watershed" is a line in the bridge that I never
really noticed until today.
"Every tree limb overhead just seems to sit and wait,
until every step you take becomes a twist of fate."
Translation: Moving forward in life involves chance and the unknown.
Your only other option is just to stand still and do nothing. And
doing nothing will gain you nothing.
So enjoy today, and do something. 8-)
~Chris~
--
[ "Now I know a refuge never grows ]
[ from a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose, ]
[ gotta tend the earth if you want a rose." ]
[ -Indigo Girls, "Hammer and Nail" ]