More Joni Mitchell
I have found that music helps.
Sometimes you need to be reminded.
I’m not much of a lyrics guy when it comes to listening to music but there is something to finding out through a songwriter’s lyrics that they had some of the same feelings or thoughts or vague impressions of the world as you have had. It’s encouraging to know that floating out in the void is someone else who felt the same way.
On
Steven’s recommendation I listened to Joni Mitchell’s album
Court and Spark. And I was struck by the confessional lyrics on a few of the tunes. She captures insecurity and loneliness very well--so personally, yet so artfully at the same time. Get a load of the words to these songs in particular:
The Same Situation
People’s PartiesCar on a Hill
Help Me
So, for once I can say "I get it." I know why people love her.
Thanks for the tip, Steven. I’ll be listening to some more of her stuff…
Jaws Was Never My Scene and I Don’t Like Star Wars
Today was hopefully a momentous day for me. (I say “hopefully” because those kinds of determinations can only be made in the future looking back.) But today, spurred on by the example of well-respected friends
Justin and Holly, I decided to ride my bike to work!
Today I performed this act (with hopes of continuing on into the future) for several reasons:
1) Even though I’ve lost an awful lot of weight, I still have another twenty pounds or so I would like to lose. In the last couple of weeks or so I have discovered the principle of adaptation. I was warned of this fact by nurses and my boss who is also an aerobics instructor. Essentially my body has learned to live with the torturous exercise of jogging I’ve been putting it through. I’ve got to mix up the muscles with different types of challenges if I want to continue to burn calories.
2) Can we be honest? Gas prices suck right now. Has anyone else noticed this? This is a way for me to lessen, not eliminate, my dependence on oil and the blood-sucking leaches- I mean, “completely reputable companies”- that sell it to me.
3) I like to be contrarian. This is a small way of doing that. Most people still utilize the internal combustion engine as their source of power for locomotion.
4) I’m all for being environmentally-friendly when I can. I figure a bike is less destructive to Mother Earth than my car. (In fact, it probably tickles her when people ride their bikes upon her surface like so many bed bugs.)
5) I have found in recent months that I need individualist projects like this to engage my mind and body. I need new sustainable things to do and think about and aspire to so as to feel fully human. The key word is “sustainable.” I am always trying to think in terms of the long haul for I do not want to be one of those people who are constantly leaping from one raison d’etre to another. Those kinds of people make me nervous.
6) The reasons not to bike to work (getting sweaty, being stuck in the building for lunch and thus the whole day, laziness, various minute details that I still have to figure out…) no longer held sway over me. I only live two miles from my office. It suddenly seemed to be a crime to NOT take advantage of that fact.
