“One sees clearly only with the heart; Anything essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery–The Little Prince
James Taylor’s 1997 album Hourglass is, for me, the soundtrack of a day trip A and I took into The Fucking City, aka San Francisco (whose inhabitants call it “The City” as if it were the only one; the “fucking” was added by A and it remained there upon every single subsequent reference either of us made; he was so funny). When we’d go driveabout, he would drive and I was in charge of music selection, choosing from a long box of CDs he’d burned from his gargantuan collection. I chose Hourglass on the way out that day, and the trip and the tracks have been inextricably linked in my mind since. The album was a favorite of his first, and once he shared it with me, of mine. But you really can’t go wrong with JT.
We had gone to town to see an exhibition of photos by Pattie Boyd, former wife of George Harrison and later the former wife of Eric Clapton as well. It was a small exhibit, many of the photos giving the impression of blown-up snapshots of friends and family, only in this case, the friends and family were all famous British rock stars.
On the drive in A’s green truck, he pointed out various sights of interest. We drove over the Stanford linear accelerator, which looks like a long line of single-wide trailers on either side of and going under highway 280, and we drove past the statue of Padre Junípero Serra, a statue I liked for its cartoony accessibility, something you don’t usually see in religious statues. A was born in San Francisco, and both sets of his grandparents lived there, and so the tour I got whenever we went into The Fucking City was much more personal, and for that, more interesting, than that of the usual tourist destinations. I loved it, and the times we shared in that city together have made it the only city I haven’t lived in to earn a permanent place in my heart. In his 55 years, living in the Bay area all his life, he’d never ridden on a cable car, and I told him he was missing out, and we’d have to rectify that one of these days. He wasn’t so sure, though, that he wanted to ruin an impressive 55-year streak. I guess he won. Bastard.
We spent so much time listening to, playing, and talking about music, there are many such soundtracks. Barely a song plays now on my iPod that doesn’t have some emotional and historical connection to him, either from before or from newly gained significance since he passed away. So many musical eulogies have found my ears especially receptive these days, songs I never fully appreciated the sad meaning of when I heard them before, but is clear as a bell now. But it was the random cropping up of “Enough to Be on Your Way” Wednesday afternoon that got to me.
The last time I saw Alice, she was leaving Santa Fe
With a bunch of round-eyed Buddhists in a killer Chevrolet
Said they turned her out of Texas, yeah, she burned them down back home,
Now she’s wild with expectation on the edge of the unknown.
Singing oh, it’s enough to be on your way
It’s enough just to cover ground,
It’s enough to be moving on.
Home, build it behind your eyes,
Carry it in your heart,
Safe among your own.
A, are you wild with expectation on the edge of the unknown? Knowing you, you are. You are giddy with wonder. And you are fine.
Is it enough to be on my way? Is it enough to cover ground? Because, me? I miss you like hell, and am not so fine. Not that I expect to be. But I was fine before; I was better than fine. I miss being fine. I miss a time just two months ago where I was happy-go-lucky, assured that I was living a charmed life filled with more love and joy than I’d ever imagined. I didn’t worry. I rarely cried. I had more than enough of everything. Now, “enough” is what I aspire to: to be strong enough to make it through the day; to be wife enough to my beloved husband whose care, patience, and humor keep me going; to be wise enough to appreciate what I still have; to be lucky enough to keep it…this time.
Interestingly, (to me, anyway), on that same album is this song:
Up From Your Life
So much for your moment of prayer, God’s not at home there is no there, there.
Lost in the stars, that’s what you are, left here on your own.
You can only hope to live on this earth, this here is it, for all it’s worth.
Nothing else awaits you, no second birth, no starry crown.
For an unbeliever like you, there’s not much they can do that would turn you away.
Though I hate to see you surrender, you need to surrender, we must find you a way to
Look up from your life, up from your life, look on up from your life, look up from your life.
There’s a river running under your feet, under this house, under this street.
Straight from the heart, ancient and sweet, on its way back home.
Even in the middle of your sadness, the everyday madness, the ongoing game.
Even when you can’t find a reason, still there is a reason, you don’t need to name it.
Look on up, look up from your life, look on up from your life, look up from your life.
Oh, even for a minute to find yourself in it, to wait by the stream to drop out of your dream,
Look on up, look up from your life, look on up from your life, look up from your life.
Informed by various contributions internal and external, a lot of disparate pieces of that hodge-podge I would vaguely label my “spirituality” have started to come together, congealing in the strange alchemy of grief, giving rise to something far more cohesive and, most surprisingly, credible than I would’ve expected of myself. Something that feels like truth to me. I would not say that I have found “God,” per se. I wouldn’t say that for a lot of reasons, most of them semantic and political. However, I will say that I am warily wading a bit in that river, one whose rippling music I’ve heard in snatches when the wind is just right, and I listen with my heart as well as my ears. And rather than being dragged under by the current, I find myself curiously buoyed. So we’ll see what that’s about.