Time and the Umbrella

Talking with a friend today about how different people schedule things, and it occurred to me that there are largely two different extreme ways of planning for future events in ones life.

There are those that, when an opportunity comes up for some future event, they choose if they are going to do it or not, at that point.  If they choose to attend it, then they exclude other possibilities from happening. They plan, and have to assume that they made the right choice, but they can be in comfort, because there is "a plan".

Then there are those that, knowing about an event, and being interested in the event, may set a mental intention that "it would be nice" to do that, but they continue with their life, allowing all possibilities in their consideration, until a final moment of decision, when all the other options have vaporized, leaving only this outcome. Making the decision before then, wouldn't include the other possibilities that emerged along the way.

If the event could be imagined as the tip of an umbrella - where all the spokes come together, and time as traversing up the umbrella towards that tip, the first people will close their umbrella, to prevent collecting other options - all the possibilities compress into a forced decision. For the second, the umbrella stays open, until each possibility leads to the final outcome...

Both approaches have their advantages, they are comfortable for some and alien to others...

Mirrored Ball

There are, on this world, some truly remarkable creatures.  I have had the deep pleasure to have met several of them in my life.  This is an ode to just such a treasured soul.

Mirrored Ball

How is it that you smile - not so much wide, but so deeply inside you,
That for a moment, you glow from within, in radiance of the pure joy?
And, how do you shine so bright, in each delightful instant -
Every moment fully consumed in an incandescent flash. Each experience, singular.

Another glint, in reflection of simple glory - a morsel of food, seemingly mundane,
yet consumed with reverence, with awareness - every shade of its energy given up to you.
In conversation, that flows like rain dancing from leaf to leaf,
Some subjects spattering into a dozen new ones, others pooling together in silence.

You are like the mirrored ball of a dance floor - shining out a million spots of light,
Each spot a facet, a tidbit of a story, a glance of beauty and grace, and then its gone,
replaced by another dot of light - different, but still remarkable -
I stare in hopes to understand it, and it is gone again.  Replaced by still another.

In the darkness, it is the light that we see.  The faceted reflections spinning on the dance hall floor,
ignoring the space between: the darkness - that which is not light - we dismiss it as uninteresting.
But the darkness is real; and by it's contrast, do we see the wonder of each glowing speck.
The ocean of darkness into which the light plays, has its own stories, its own wonders.

Between the mirrors are glimpses of darkness so deep, they too are shocking in their depth.
How do you glow so brightly, against these dark ghosts which I have seen only from a distance?
I wonder but that the very quality so remarkable and stunning in your instantaneous presence,
Isn't also your way to rise above the dark distance - and keep it at bay?

The Veil of Time

- In the mid eighties, my world started opening up, bits at a time.  I met a remarkable young lady that taught me many things, shared much of her different life with me. She was a "witch" (the good kind - pagan),  and a fairy (fae - or a "spirit of light"), and so in loving her I discovered pieces of ritual, perspectives, concepts that I hadn't experienced before.  She was the first person (and still one of the deepest) that I felt a connection far beyond that which could be explained, memories of things that we hadn't done, yet certainly had - just not in this life, this world, this "dream".  She got me thinking about lots of things, and sometime during our on-again, off-again love, I wrote this song. October of 85.  This is one that I should record someday.

The Veil of Time

Ah confusion, complex illusion,
The minds eye, can pierce the veil of time,
see through, the years of solitude,
Somehow I could see, that someday we would be.

I sit here in a trance, and dream of random chance,
I remember tomorrow, but can't place yesterday,
If only you knew, what we'd look like when we're through,
Nothings new about today - it's all an instant replay...

[Chorus]
Ah, ah, pierce the veil of time,
Walk through the eons, but stay her by my side.
We could change the future, or at least we can try
Ah, ah, pierce the veil of time...

I met a girl, thought she was the world,
It'll be some time next year, before she's finally here,
I treat her well, she says to go to hell,
I won't ignore her voice, I just haven't got that choice

The past is gone, the future carries on,
Don't let the cost, justify the loss,
Know thy self, that's your only real wealth,
Live your truth, don't forget about your youth

[Chorus]

(C) 2011 Dave Cox

So this is love

- A joyful, simple song from a long time ago - probably the late 80s, one of the relatively rare times that I took the moment to record my happiness, even as it was tinted with bits of insecurity.

So This Is Love

She's my sunny day, on a stormy night,
She's what makes me smile, when I'm down,
She's the stary sky, from a lonely house,
I pray that "we" will always be around.

She's the only flower, in a grassy glade,
She's the girl walking off to school,
She's the friend, I love so much,
She will always be me truest jewel

So this is love, the priceless gift,
And true, the greatest prize,
To win the heart, of the one you love,
and be beautiful in there eyes.

(C) 2011 Dave Cox

Wandering

- Digging through my poetry, I'm reminded of a theme in my life and common in creativity, that it is the extremes of emotion that drive one most to create, to write, to compose.  When I'm happy, I spend my time doing that which makes me happy.  When I'm sad, I didn't feel like I had anything else to do but to try to write, to create, to extract this pain from me, and push it out onto paper, to the world.  In reviewing them, I see that so many of the songs I wrote (most of which I didn't post) are of a familiar theme, that really there isn't much new there to offer.  So now, I'm looking for the stuff that is more unique, that has a voice of its own, a message, a memory that I feel is more universal.  Below, an unnamed poem (which I've called "wandering") from August of 1989.


I've been wandering so long, searching in the night
waiting for a lover, but its somehow never right.
I'm looking for a friendship that will never let me down,
but I've got this feeling it's no where to be found.

So I look within me, to find what's down inside,
For a shining bit of wisdom, a pearl of some great price,
I hope to find an answer to a question I don't know,
I need direction, need some place to go...

Oh lord, grant me guidance, let me know that you're still there,
could you send a sweet reminder, an answer to a prayer?
Would you kindly give me courage, grant me hope to carry on,
I don't need to sound discouraged, just need some help along...

Could someone please help me along...

(C) 2011 Dave Cox

Expectations

Expectations grow, like a bramble in our dreams. As each one is met, we dismiss it ungraciously. As each one is unmet, we howl at the unfairness of it all. And yet, the expectations are as much ours as were the dreams they grew in...

I Love You

- Another lament on transitions, on differences. A lovely soul that I spent several years with, thinking once again that this was the one. In my heart, I saw our future, our life out into old age together. I moved off to college and thought that regular calls, and a few visits a month could make it work. But in retrospect, I realize that even with my proclamations of love, missed the boat in not offering her more space in my life.  I knew I needed to go to college, but beyond taking her on the tour of the college with me, I could have, should have offered her some strands of my life to weave us together with.  I could have proposed, but the time wasn't right.  I could have at least shared more of my then vision for us - or perhaps I did, and now fool my self in thinking that I could have persuaded her, had I only shown her my vision more clearly.  I could have offered her to move to the college town with me, but that would have uprooted her life, for an unsure future with me.  This song is the closest to "country" that I've gotten in a song that I actually recorded. December of 1988.

           I love you

I love you, I love you, I love, she once said
As if that really matters, now that our love's dead
And all of the memories, all the moments we spend,
It all comes to nothing, when you loose them, again.

I thought I found the woman, who would love me for life,
Sometime in the future, we would be man and wife,
But somehow that's all different, now that her love ends,
Now the woman, that loved me, is barely a friend.

I love her, I love her, I love her, I cried,
And if love doesn't mater, than what good is life?
If only, she would love me, as more than a friend,
She'd love me, I'd love her, we'd be lovers, again.

(C) 2011 Dave Cox