Lyrics - Aisle Two

Six months ago, maybe more

I was walking out the stage

Looked up and saw your face

Oh right-- we work in the same place

You were surprised too, and kinda grinned 

That made me anxious

You walked me to the store, I wondered if I'd been a bore

(chorus)

Cuz every time I see you

Look up into those eyes so blue 

I try to hide it, but it's so hard to do

My face betrays me with its ruby red hue

Let's stay awhile, keep on dreaming 

Here, in aisle two

Fast forward a few weeks, and we're both there now

Standing in the produce aisle

Scoping out vitamin C

You say something bout organic oranges

I was pretty sure it was completely wrong so I checked with a biologist friend of mine 

And it was, but I didn't mind then and I still don't now 

Cuz every time I see you

Look up into those eyes so blue 

I try to hide it, but it's so hard to do

My face betrays me with its ruby red hue

Let's stay awhile, keep on dreaming 

Here, in aisle two

I just can't stand it

You've gotta see

I like the way you pick your celery 

I like you standing here, next to me 

Let's move an aisle over and pick out a few ingredients 

To bake our house, of gingerbread 

Just sweet enough for you and me

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

One day I'm buying oranges 

when I hear someone softly say my name

I smile, it's been a while 

But you're back in the frame 

We wander over to the section I prefer 

I wonder, if you're still with her

It'd be so nice to take you out for tea

But standing here too is okay by me

Cuz every time I see you

Look up into those eyes so blue 

I try to hide it, but it's so hard to do

My face betrays me with its ruby red hue

Let's stay awhile, keep on dreaming 

Here, in aisle two

Lyrics - Meditation

Every morning, when I rise

I pray the Lord might be my eyes

There's so much good I don't realize

Help me to see

Next I ask, oh, when I wake

Won't you please my heart just take

Do it now, for my sake,

Help me be free

Again

Finally with my tea

I ask for just a word 

Or maybe three

Seems today I need you here

With me

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

The sun is setting, I sit right down and

Make a list of all the reasons 

I needn't frown

I've got plenty of good food to eat 

And family so sweet

But there's still something out there 

I've gotta meet

Lord, is there still time today?

Whaddaya say?

Songwriting

Hello from Austin, dear readers! 

I'm one week into my life here, officially, after being asked in July to come back to be the afternoon nanny for a Wellesley family and also being offered to join the teaching faculty of a wonderful community music school here. 

"Miss Lucy", as I'm referred to in these parts, is my new alias as I flit from music studio to classroom and from after-school pick-up to the playground. Days here are full of sweet children playing whimsical music and teaching me their games, and nights are mixtures of more music outdoors with friends and adventures into the various nooks and corners and taco joints of a city I am quickly embracing as my own. Each night as I drive home just north of the city proper, I put down the top of Goldie Hawn, my convertible and friend, and inhale the warm, Texan summer air. The freshness is tinged with the aromas of highway construction, far from pleasant, but striking to me, as I too am building something exciting and new of my own here. (End metaphorical tangent) 

The musical friends I've made here in just the short summer are so inspiring to me. I've decided to try to write a new song each week to perform at the Monday night outdoor open mic we like best, and I'll put the lyrics and maybe some videos here as the weeks go by. 

I got a bit homesick for all of my faraway friends and family a few nights ago and started writing a song about pie... And then made cookies instead of finishing the song. Maybe tonight I'll think of a fitting tune. 

peace & love 

Howdy, friends.

It's been a few months since I've updated this blog, as I've been over on my other page (see here) tracking all of the travel-related adventures (and misadventures...). I've recently landed in Austin, Texas, where I find myself blinking in the sunshine and oddly comforted by the close hug of the heated air (up to 103 degrees the first day I was here). My Yankee blood is feeling fatigued by the heat and learning the deeper meaning of a mid-morning and mid-afternoon siesta, but I am soaking up the warmth like a beetle in the sun.

Or maybe like a kitten in the pool of the sunlight on the tile kitchen floor. I'd rather be a kitten than a beetle, upon second thought.


Regardless. Some writing and much musing has been happening these last few months, but the majority of it has been the kind for my eyes only. (Sorry dudes). Now that my feet are staying in the same general vicinity for a few months, I'm happy to be back on my writing routine and to start spinning out more poetry to chew on and edit and scratch out and wonder if anyone else reads it and so forth. Is it strange that I really do truly enjoy this process?


This one I found on my phone while cleaning notes out waiting for my flight to Texas a few days ago. It's from April 10....I remember all of the context. It's nice that now, in June, I feel much less weary, but I still dwell on the comforting feeling of knowing that there are people out there who love me, no matter the distance. This is dedicated to all of you.

From April 10, 2015

It's this quiet knowing
That you exist
Hemispheres and time zones evaporate
I can sleep

Body's willing but minds ablaze
Never seems to tire these days
Wishing I could follow you to work and home
But my Tuesday's ending in a cold kitchen alone

Cut up the onions
Set the water on
The kettle's my company
The popping corn replaces
Our chatter

My ginger candle
Steadily flickering

It's this quiet knowing
That you exist
Hemispheres and time zones

No matterYour voice on my phone
Even just the message
Before the tone.


-lab

just to mention

I am tracking some travel-related adventures and items in a separate place...this space shall be reserved for strictly the weirder and wilder musings that don't necessarily fall within the realm of a "travel blog" and stray more toward the imagination and the pursuit of writing down something that needs to be creatively expressed.

So...the new blog is here: http://lucybee-solviturambulando.blogspot.com/

But...the old blog is here, as in actually right here. You know.

the trouble with blue eyes

from Good Friday

The trouble is, I can see the future.

No, not the what will be but the what could be

I think it’s the worser ability of the two

A moment of eye contact in a subway train

Smelling of farts and a young man softly rapping along

To the lil wayne song his girlfriend’s playing with him

On a singular intelligent device, connected by wires,

Closed off with communication pumping directly into their ears

I glance over and look

Blue eyes

Look away

Blue true dream of sky forget it

Next stop’s mine, what a day.

What a week.

Blue comes in and out of recollection

Brain searching for the landing spot

Circling and circling

Dein blaues Auge hielt so still ich blicke bis zum Grund

Du fragst mich, was ich sehen will?

Ich sehe mich gesund.

Aren’t we all, every one of us small scurrying creatures, hoping to find

One who sees us

In the midst of our life

And simply scoops us up for a moment

Perhaps, forever. 

one

A week from today I'll be thirty-two minutes away from my last Friday workday in Symphony Hall.

It's been coming in in waves... bits and pieces of the massive realization of the step I'm readying to take out in a big blue and green unknown. The messages from beyond are washed up on the shore I've called home and comfort, known daily routines and cups of steaming coffee; the small words and messages from beyond appeared by my toes and some days I've been too busy walking back and forth along the bank holding myself together to notice them. Other days it was all I could to take one step, I was so preoccupied in scanning the sand for traces of a vessel of meaning from the other places, for they appear as shells, rocks, creatures, broken edges of massive sand dollars. I treasure each discovery, I shriek aloud in wonder and delight at the mystery that brought us together. I hold each tiny shell in my cupped palm and study its inner-workings; if only I were an ant, and could make my home in one such beautifully constructed immaculate edifice.


***

A few weeks ago I spent a few days with my oldest friends on beaches never before visited by my ten small toes. Water makes me feel at home, fifteen years old, growing up by a small lake for the school year, and a larger lake for my summer. I was so very lucky -- we all were --- these dear, old friends of mine, the ones who were my friend when I wasn't pretty and when I couldn't navigate social scenes. They all had boyfriends at summer camp except me. My head and heart were in the trees and the clouds, waking up early to read my Bible, and later, an e.e. cummings volume of poetry that would become ragged with the cover torn off from a smothering of love and attention. The volume accompanied me to the Alps where I had my first French romance; to Haiti where my heart was broken for my beautiful, joyful Haitian friends dealing with poverty, harsh conditions, and later, the aftermath of a devastating earthquake; and the simple words of the poet came with me to both my first and second apartments. They comforted me the first year decorating a Christmas tree alone late one night, my roommate asleep already, but I was too sad to sleep. The white lights and green branches waved and winked at me, knowing things I would patiently wait to learn.

***

Packing up my books a few nights ago, in the place I have called home for two years now, I hesitated when I reached the purple torn-off cover of the selected poetry by my favorite whimsically serious writer. It's not that I don't need the words anymore -- i do -- it's that, instead of bringing volumes of already-written poetry on my journey, I've decided to bring blank journals to fill, with my own words.

There are a lot of them, I think; I've shared some of them here in this public space, but there are so many more that I am struggling with, allowing to pool in the elixir of memory and time, stirred up with song, dance, and early mornings. They shiver and shimmer along the bridge of my nose and back, sinking deeper into lungs and heart. They're heavy; they demand attention. They're part of the reason I'm doing everything that I'm doing. There's a new sense of peace that follows when I've been able to write something that has been spinning around for days and weeks, slowly forming into silvery stream and a final note of punctuation.

While I'm away , I will write, pray, meditate, and sing. I'll cook for the friends I stay with, and show them my little collection of messages from the deep blue. It's already helped so much to allow others in to my story and thoughts.

I thank you all, dearly. It hurts to go away, but here is what a certain Cambridge native by the initials "e.e." would say, and what I do very much so believe :

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

My heart is very full right now. It's keeping me going -- strengthening each word and straightening each footfall.