Prince of all things known

I was taking a walk this afternoon with Van Morrison on my ear buds.

I almost want to end this entry there; Van the man is so comforting, inspiring and he gets me dancing.

Then it was Paul Simon and he’s always blown me away with his lyrics. In many ways, better than Dylan. Then I put on the Stones’ “Exile on Main Street.” I don’t know what to say about the Stones nor do I apologize for appreciating Mick and the boys.

So what? It’s the music. Nothing gets in the way, nothing. Put on the music and let it just flow and it will heal. Maybe not a long lasting healing but temporarily blissful. Almost like praying.

It is so hard to work at feeling better in these difficult times. I was talking to my neighbor today and he was saying things are tough. I told him he said that same thing last year, only about something different. I suggested he keep things in proper perspective.

Tough times are always here or around the corner. That’s not gloom and doom but just a commentary on existence. There’s no degrees to feeling down. When you’re down, you’re down. Sounds like a Beatles song.

When this is all done, I hope we learn a lesson or two. Like keeping our eyes on the prize and not on some golden calf. What is the prize? I guess it is life and appreciating just being allowed to breathe and to looking into someone’s eyes and seeing the past and the future are good.

Needless to say, our culture has become infected by anger. But people really don’t want to be angry. As a noted psychologist once said, anger is just sadness that can’t be addressed. And as another noted thinker said, anger is a total waste of time.

I used to hang outside Broadway shows and make up stories about the people I saw walking along the street. Very complicated stories about how this person’s life was turned upside down because she learned that her father wasn’t her blood father.

Or how this other person had high expectations of one day being a dancer and how he had saved his pennies to attend a dance school and how utterly dream like he felt when dancing.

Or hows one woman knew in her heart that she would find her soulmate if only she continued looking and never gave up. And how in the privacy of her mind, in the late hours of the night, she knew she would be a great catch.

See a common thread? It’s about hope and future and joy and peace, universal hopes and dreams. It’s the place to go when the world looks grey and it seems that the planet is about to spin off its axis.

Knowing how much we all have in common is comforting. We are all from the same place, we have the same DNA in common, the same roots in the trees, so how could we not be alike. If we could get out of ourselves’ ways, we’d do fine.

The coronavirus is just another way the earth self-regulates. Sound like a load of baloney? First of all, there are no loads of baloney and second of all, I will bow down to anyone who can show me the real reason for the coronavirus.

Let it be. Sounds like a song.