Lullabies
More mood swings and sudden emotional storms. (I think an emotional weather forecast would be a useful thing. "Sullen overcast with 40% chance of showers, unless the warm-food front makes its way into the stomach.") Cyclical bursts of heavy emotion; hormones? Dunno. My cycle tends to be longer than a month, though. The worst of it is usually in midwinter. For someone who spends most of his time indoors, I'm surprisingly dependent on getting regular doses of sunlight. I'd never make it through the winter in Seattle and points north. Have survived a New England winter or two, but mostly by staying indoors, and fleeing to Virginia come February.
On the way home from workshop this afternoon, a gust: TJ Burnside-Clapp's "Lullaby for a Weary World" suddenly came to mind, and I couldn't figure out why it hadn't suggested itself sooner:
I see her people dying for such bold and bloody causes
Sleep, my weary world
And the bodies of the innocent are washed up on the lengthening shore
While the rising tide of history just ebbs and flows again.
Others on the Web did think of it, and posted lyrics in entirety on Sept. 11. But song's copyrighted and TJ's not on the blanket-permission list and I don't know how to contact her, and anyway it probably doesn't work nearly as well as lyrics if you haven't heard the gorgeous music. So I'll refrain even though the relevant album is alas long out of print.
And then at another, calmer, end of the emotional spectrum, Gordon Bok:
Oh, my Joanie, don't you know
That the stars are swinging slow
And the seas are rolling easy, as they did so long ago
If I had a thing to give you, I would tell you one more time
That the world is always turning toward the morning.
Too much for me. And I shoulda been in bed hours ago. Sleep will probably improve outlook, and after all that's what lullabies are for, yes?
G'night.
