If I had a heart - encore

I finally bought the new Joni Mitchell album, on the sort of a day you should buy a Joni album.

It began with picking strawberries. There is something rhythmic about walking through a strawberry field. Measured, light steps, hunched back, hands rifling through the plant, ever so gently. You don't pull on any strawberry you like. You hold it gently and wait for it to come away into your hand. If it doesn't, you move on. A bit like life isn't it...

Then there was a destination-less drive through the country side just outside of Cary and Apex. Farms upon farms, and in the middle tractors taking down trees of a hundred years in a hundred minutes. Elegantly huge signs posted up for the penultimate luxury living. A fence put up to shield the prospects from the murder of the forest that lived with itself in peace forever. Every now an then, spotting a crude, hand-painted chart put up annoyingly close to the construction sites, saying, pleading, "Stop Cary from taking over our farms / lives / ways of living". A sickening contrast, showing that the battle had already been won by the big industry, and all the little specks, and small farmers would soon be made to move off. Some with a juicy bone of enough money to retire in pseudo-luxury, others just forced out by building pressures.

Next stop was that wonderful old book shop in Franklin Street. Where you can sort through arrays of books, reeking of eras gone by, some falling apart in your hands. Sifting through books in the company of cats that don't smell like cats, but like old old books. You can feel the wisdom and peace that lies within the books in their eyes, and in their lazy sprawl. I bought more books then I would have time to read in the near future, but somehow their just lying there on my table gives me a certain reassurance. That this existence is somehow about a little more then I think. And there is always the possibility of a wonderful surprise. Not the surprise of a birthday party thrown in your honor, but the surprise of a flower blossoming in the wrong season.

And then I walked into the used and new music shop right across the street. Arrays of Jazz music, Blues scattered about, records of years of yonder stacked up with all the dust. Somehow I found my way to the M's and there it was, the album I had been meaning to buy. An album that I nearly bought in NY City, but was dissuaded by Alina. But then that wasn't the day or place to buy a Joni album either. Standing inside a Starbucks on Times Square, surrounded by Big Yellow Taxis, and feeling mother earth dying just a little bit more with that unnecessary car's exhaust.

But in that music shop where the owner actually knew every record, CD, LP he had in his store, and he knew the music. Somehow that felt the right time to bring "Shine" into my life.

We heard the album on our way back, before stopping in the middle to eat the strawberries with cream and sugar borrowed from that coffee shop. I have been listening to it every since. And I feel at peace with myself for now. Questions of right, wrong, belief, heaven and hell don't bother me. I am just hoping this feeling will go on just a little bit longer.

If I Had A Heart
by Joni Mitchell

Holy war
Genocide
Suicide
Hate and cruelty...
How can this be holy?
If I had a heart I'd cry.

These ancient tales...
The good go to heaven
And the wicked ones burn in hell...
Ring the funeral bells!
If I had a heart I'd cry.

There's just too many people now
Too little land
Much too much desire
You feel so feeble now
It's so out of hand
Big bombs and barbed wire
We've set our lovely sky
Our lovely sky
On fire!

There's just too many people now
And too little land
Too much rage and desire
It makes you feel so feeble now
It's so out of hand-
Big bombs and barbed wire...
Can't you see
Our destiny?
We are making this Earth
Our funeral pyre!

Holy Earth
How can we heal you?
We cover you like a blight...
Strange birds of appetite...
If I had a heart I'd cry.
If I had a heart I'd cry.
If I had a heart I'd cry.