In humming to myself the song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" (for obvious reasons -- I'm running low on time today once again), I paused for a second and tried to recall who sang and wrote that song. I'm sure I knew it from Judy Collins. Here:
Let me flash the last verse for you, in case you're in no position to listen right now:
So come the storms of winter
And then the birds of spring again
I have no fear of time
For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?
I didn't know anything about the woman who wrote it -- Sandy Denny -- which is strange as I've always loved folk-pop music and never more than in the years she was writing and recording. I suppose it's because I lived in a near music vacuum when the song was released in 1969. Those were my Warsaw years and western music trickled in ever so slowly, randomly, a song here, a song there. Strawberry Fields (1967)! Then silence. Ruby Tuesday (1967) and again silence. Build Me Up Buttercup (1968), silence once more. Judy Collins, on the other hand, really picked up in popularity just when I reemerged in New York (as an au paire). Send in the Clowns hit the charts in 1973. I'm reading that Sandy Denny died soon after, at the terribly young age of 31.
How do some lives become so twisted and complicated? Sandy (I read) suffered from depression and probably a lot of other ailments. A life cut short. And yet, out of nowhere, I picked up her song and here I am working in my flower fields and singing silently And then the birds of spring again, I have no fear of time, For who knows how my love grows? And who knows where the time goes?
Artists who die before their time do leave us their art. We forget about their maladies, we remember their canvases, poetry, music. Those of us without the gift of genius leave behind something else: images of how we were. Isn't that reason enough to make it a life's goal to try hard to make those images ones we can be proud of?
My morning walk:
Breakfast:
Weeding. Appointments. Errands. Mowing. (Missing in there is "cherry picking" -- better get to it tomorrow, or else the birds will win.)
And just like that, my day is nearly done. Who knows where the time goes, who knows where the time goes...
Let's salvage just a little of it by putting ourselves someplace new-ish. We read about it in the local paper -- there's a newly constructed building, called the Black Business Hub (which seeks to house small startups and businesses run by Black and minority entrepreneurs), that has a Tuesday market of Black pop ups and food vendors -- mostly selling prepared foods. Sounded good in the paper. We got on the motorcycle and rode off to it.
It was a disappointment in that there was only one vendor -- a delightful one, aided by her granddaughter -- but just one, selling two foods: catfish hoagies and beef something or other.
We picked up a hoagie, though it was richly seasoned and mayo-ed, and so we are likely to nibble a little and call it a day. No matter, I can add a veggie frittata to the supper menu! I do hope the Hub market fills with more vendors over time. The article indicated as much. Fingers crossed.
