Forget him for the day...but never forget my Omerta

(With apologies to Leonard Cohen – the rightful owner of these lyrics)

My friends are gone and my hair is grey.
I ache in the places where I used to play.
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on.
I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.

I said to Hank Williams: “How lonely does it get?”
Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet,
but I hear him coughing all night long,
a hundred floors above me in the tower of song.

I was born like this, I had no choice.
I was born with the gift of a golden tone,
and twenty-seven angels from the great beyond,
they tied me to this table right here in the tower of song.

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
- I’m very sorry, baby, doesn’t look like me at all.
I’m standing by the window where the light is strong.
They don’t let a man kill you not in the tower of song.

Now you can say that I’ve grown bitter but of this you may be sure:
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor,
and there’s a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong.
You see, you hear these funny voices in the tower of song.

I see you standing on the other side.
I don’t know how the river got so wide.
I loved you, I loved you way back when -
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed,
but I feel so close to everything that we lost-
We’ll never, we’ll never have to lose it again.

So I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back.
They’re moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track.
But you’ll be hearing from me, baby, long after I’m gone.
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly from my window in the tower of song.

My friends are gone and my hair is grey.
I ache in the places where I used to play.
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on.
I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.

Not the things that happen to you shape your life, but your reaction to them. Even a dreadful experience left behind will not affect the quality of your being.

When did you think of me?

The plain of my alone-ness
Sought the black bulk of your trees
And my hand tore at the grass
And scooped out hard earth
And made some sort of brick
For some sort of house
upon desert plain and sky
I have done looking at.

I let go, I turn aside, I put down all disagreeable or painful memories relating to what I have done, or would have wanted to do in the past, relating to all the episodes of my past activity. I let go, I put down what I have been or would have wished to be in the past. I let go, I put down the impressions that I have felt, I discharge and strip myself of them.

David-Neel and Lama Yongden,
la Connaissance Transcendante,
Adyar, Paris, 1958

Fidelity to commitment in the face of doubts and fears is a very spiritual thing; the giving is the very thing that makes you thrive and flourish

“Notes from the Desk of Aussiefemmebot”

“True love is neither physical, nor romantic. True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be and will not be.” (Unknown)