You and I are Gemini

The Twins ~ Castor & Pollux ~ May 21 – June 21

Geminid Google Doodle

To celebrate the season of twin-ness,
here are two Favorites from The Alan Parsons Project:

Gemini
Watching waiting rising falling
Listening calling drifting
Touching feeling seeing believing
Hoping sending leaving
I couldn't say why you and I are gemini
If I tried to write a million words a day
I see your shadow coming closer
Then watch you drifting away

Watching waiting rising falling
Listening calling drifting
Touching feeling seeing believing
Hoping sending leaving
I couldn't say why you and I are gemini
We are traveling a million worlds away
I see your shadow coming closer
Then watch you drifting away

Duet: Alan Parsons & Chris Rainbow

Days Are Numbers
[aka The Traveler / Traveller]

The traveler is always leaving town
He never has the time to turn around
And if the road he's taken isn't leading anywhere
He seems to be completely unaware

The traveler is always leaving home
The only kind of life he's ever known
When every moment seems to be
A race against the time
There's always one more mountain left to climb

Days are numbers
Watch the stars
We can only see so far
Someday, you'll know where you are

Remember
Days are numbers
Count the stars
We can only go so far
One day, you'll know where you are

The traveler awaits the morning tide
He doesn't know what's on the other side
But something deep inside of him
Keeps telling him to go
He hasn't found a reason to say no

The traveler is only passing through
He cannot understand your point of view
Abandoning reality, unsure of what he'll find
The traveler in me is close behind

Days are numbers
Watch the stars
We can only see so far
Someday, you'll know where you are

Remember
Days are numbers
Count the stars
We can only go so far
One day, you'll know where you are

Songwriters: Alan Parsons / Eric Woolfson

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Previous Alan Parsons Posts

May Day Paradise

One Hundred Years From Now

Spring ~ Time

Until We Seek Until We Find Ammonia Avenue

Gemini Cats!
Catmint by Sarah Young

Also Dryads ~ Naiads ~ Sisters

P.S. In anticipation of Bloomsday . . .

May Day Paradise

FIRST OF APRIL

FIRST OF MAY

To One In Paradise ~ Alan Parsons Project

If I could see the sky above
And my mind could be set free
As wild white horses reached the shore
I'd stand alone and oversee

And if the bush before me burns
Should I turn my eyes away
And still the voices I can hear
As clear to me as light of day

I believed in my dreams
Nothing could change my mind
Now I know what they mean
How could I be so blind

Cold sands of time
(Winds that blow as cold as ice
Sounds that come in the night)
Shall hide what is left of me
(Come from Paradise)

I've been through times when no one cared
(Words that were mine)
I've seen clouds in empty skies
When one kind word meant more to me
(Shall last as a memory)

Than all the love in Paradise
I believed in my dreams
Nothing could change my mind
Till I found what they mean
Nothing can save me now

"And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams."

MIDDLE OF APRIL

To One in Paradise ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine—
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”—but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o’er!
No more—no more—no more—
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.

Previous May Day Posts
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2016
2017
2018

One Hundred Years From Now

The Empyrean ~ Mists of Time
~ Columbia River Gorge ~
"So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean. Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and world, must also soar and sing."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
from The American Scholar [See more.]:
An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge,
August 31, 1837

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios
from A Commencement Address delivered at Stanford University,
June 12, 2005
Old and Wise
[Click Title to Hear]
by Alan Parsons (b 1948)

As far as my eyes can see
There are shadows approaching me
And to those I left behind
I wanted you to know
You've always shared my deepest thoughts
You follow where I go

And oh when I'm old and wise
Bitter words mean little to me
Autumn winds will blow right through me
And someday in the mist of time
When they asked me if I knew you
I'd smile and say you were a friend of mine
And the sadness would be lifted from my eyes
Oh when I'm old and wise

As far as my eyes can see
There are shadows surrounding me
And to those I leave behind
I want you all to know
You've always shared my darkest hours
I'll miss you when I go

And oh, when I'm old and wise
Heavy words that tossed and blew me
Like Autumn winds will blow right through me
And someday in the mist of time
When they ask you if you knew me
Remember that you were a friend of mine
As the final curtain falls before my eyes
Oh when I'm old and wise

As far as my eyes can see
Vista House
~ Columbia River Gorge ~

P.S.
As Marilynne Robinson says in Gilead:
"It is worth living long enough to outlast
whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.
Another reason why you must be careful of your health" (238).

&

As Walt Whitman says:
"Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed,
and shall bless me."
See "Loos'd of Limits"

Spring ~ Time

Early Spring in Hanover, Germany, on the river Leine
The Doppler Effect
One face of the clock is saying
there's not much time. Finish
what you think you were born to do.

The other rounds and spheres
like sleep, it questions
over and over, what is time.

Did we pass through winter
or did winter pass through us?
You creak your windows open

to this familiar green clutter
called the spring. But nothing happens.
You only change places with yourself.

****************

Surreal and Real
Although you were barely prompt enough,
you did glimpse time blending into space
in Einstein's brain. But luckily you
didn't throw your watch away;
because it's Newton who has remained your closest friend
and neighbor.

Ernest Sandeen, 1908 - 1997
Notre Dame Professor and Poet

A fascinating little book about time, that goes hand in hand with Sandeen's poems, is Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. I mentioned it briefly on my book blog a few years ago in connection with The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which is now an award - winning movie in addition to being an endlessly intriguing book.

[I wrote earlier that Brian Selznick's Hugo was an absolutely amazing novel / picture book for kids and grown-ups, about time, space, secrets, automata, and movies. Some history, some fiction, some magic. You will be living inside this book for a little while!
. . . and that Einstein's Dreams was another book of another dimension. Also some history, some fiction, some science, some poetry. Prepare for time travel. Days of future passed, back to the future, forward to the past, and so forth.]

Lightman writes, "For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back" (37).

Who could forget the chapter describing the world of no memory? And even more memorable are the people who stand in line to worship the Great Clock in the Temple of Time: "They stand quietly, but secretly they seethe with their anger. For they must watch measured that which should not be measured. They must watch the precise passage of minutes and decades. They have been trapped by their own inventiveness and audacity. And they must pay with their lives" (p 152).

Equally contradictory is the world where the people live up on the hill because they think the high altitudes will make their lives longer, when in fact the thin air makes their lives shorter. It's sort of like my own personal theory about staying up 'til all hours when I can't (or don't want to) sleep. Sleeping as little as possible is my strategy for cheating Death. The more hours I'm awake, the longer my life is, right? Though secretly I realize that this plan could backfire!

A few timely songs that I love to put on "replay"
and listen to time and time again:

John Denver:
"Rocky Mountain Suite
(Cold Nights in Canada)"
And the time is upon us, today is forever
Tomorrow is just one of yesterday's dreams

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Enya: "Only Time"
Who can say if your love grows
As your heart chose
Only time
And who can say where the road goes
Where the day flows
only time

*************

Alan Parsons: "Time"
Who knows when we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river
To the seaThousand Hills State Park, Kirksville, Missouri
~ Photo by Jay Beets ~

Saving Time & Full Hand