Epilog: One More Look at Jane

Listening now to 1980 music in my car, and thinking still about the words and feelings I'd blogged here a couple days ago, I nearly ran up over the sidewalk this morning when I caught the lyrics early-on in "Against the Wind" by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. It's the title track from their best-selling album, and hit the music stores just half a year after Jane and I had our surprising, boundless summer.

Listening closely to the words Bob sang, nearly every single one of them sounded like my own thoughts on looking back. With the exception of "like a wildfire out of control, till there was nothing left to burn, and nothing left to prove", and "she swore that it would never end", I could have been singing the song myself. (There was no lack of control, nor anything burning up and away; but we also had no conscious sense of its never ending – rather, we just lived in very-real, very-intense and sweet now. Baba Ram Dass would have been proud of us.)

I mentioned on Monday several songs with passages, or note-structure, that still seem to describe bits and pieces of The Summer of Jane. I forgot about this one, though – I was looking at songs that were playing even while she and I sat and whispered under the night sky, or held hands at Pizza Hut ®. I have no memory of being mentally clobbered at the time, back in May of 1980 when the song peaked… nor of feeling the least bit guilty with my girlfriend, when/if we heard it together. But I must have noticed some of the parallels then; I guess the memory of that thought has long-since evaporated.

So I went out on the 'net earlier this afternoon, in search of the lyrics in order to post them here – easy to find, of course. But what I couldn't track down was the copyright information, so once again my neck might be jutting out just a bit, legal-wise. I can find where Bob Seger is credited with writing both the music and the lyrics; the album itself was released in February of 1980 by Capitol Records under Catalog Number 724358431629 (technically, that number's for the remaster). More than this I haven't been able to dredge up – so for that purpose, let me paraphrase here the legal disclaimer from a lyrics-posting site:

These lyrics are the property of, and copyrighted by, their owner(s), and are provided here for educational and illustrative purposes only, okay? Thank you.

Against the Wind 

It seems like yesterday,
But it was long ago:
Janey was lovely, she was the queen of my nights,
There in the darkness, with the radio playing low.

And the secrets that we shared,
The mountains that we moved:
Caught like a wildfire out of control,
Till there was nothing left to burn, and nothing left to prove.

And I remember what she said to me,
How she swore that it never would end;
I remember how she held me, oh so tight—
Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then…

Against the wind,
We were running against the wind:
We were young and strong—
We were running
Against the wind.

And the years rolled slow past,
And I found myself alone,
Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends;
I found myself further and further from my home.

And I guess I lost my way;
There were oh-so-many roads:
I was living to run, and running to live,
Never worried about paying — or even how much I owed.

Moving eight miles a minute for months at a time,
Breaking all the rules that would bend,
I began to find myself searching,
Searching for shelter again and again.

Against the wind,
A little something against the wind:
I found myself seeking shelter
Against the wind.

Well, those drifter's days are past me now;
I’ve got so much more to think about:
Deadlines and commitments;
What to leave in, what to leave out.

Against the wind:
I’m still running against the wind;
I’m older now, and I’m still
Against the wind, against the wind… 

I'm being really disproportionate, by the way, in spotlighting this memory here (again!). Jane and I had maybe two or three special months, if even that, together, before the world started back up and spun us each off in very different directions. Certainly since then (and even before), I've had girlfriends (and a wife!) who've had much more profound effects on my heart and life. 

Spartacus weighed in yesterday morning with these words:

WOW--heck of a poem, and heckuva blog entry! The whole thing was somewhat evocative of the feelings I get when listening to Bob Seger's "Night Moves". Though obviously our experiences were different, there still seems to be an almost universal element to what you described--when the world was fresh and young, before commitments and experience irrevocably changed things, an intensity, novelty...

Starship's "Jane", "My Sharona", etc… the musical citations are like Proust's Madeleine, evoking emotions far out of proportion to their (apparent) mundane pop culture footnote (or cookie) status. As you rightly point out, these are part of the soundtrack to (y)our lives--anybody who enjoys music could empathize.

Yikes, I gotta quit before I dissolve into even more incoherent blabbering. You've got a poet's soul, and the verbal/written chops to let it shine!

(Interesting bit with the Proust, there, Sparty – that was a new one on me; but from what I've read online to grasp hold of your reference, you seem to have hit the nail very well with my head; thanks!)

My memories of the women who've graced my life (even the one I backed myself into divorcing) are nearly all good in all ways. Each one has added her own share of the patina that makes my heart shine, and even the occasional dent, ding, or/and scar left in their wake has – in the long run – left me the stronger… and added rich "character" to the finish.

I hope their own experience and recollection are either as warm, or much more forgetful and forgiving. Where I'm still in touch, now and then, with a couple of them, I, uh, don't dare ask. If ignorance isn't bliss, then at least it should be allowed to reinforce the compassionate amnesia.

Followup: a comment came through over a year later:

witch1 Dec 31, 2008

Simply Wow!…Thank you and Blessings

From the Quill: A Prayer for Jane

Amid the clutter that still brackets my life, and serves at times to distract me, is my music collection – something around four or five thousand MP3-music tracks. Most of these are songs that made the rock-side of the years' Top Hundred (or should have) during the long and winding span of my life thus far. These I keep on CD by year, each disk holding as many as (almost) 200 tracks; and every so often I pull them out and listen to them, singing along badly sometimes, in my car. Yes, my car's CD player can handle MP3 CDs. (What, yours can't?) This is one of very few indulgences of mine... and I don't do iPods; thank you.

I do also have some of the music broken out specifically by artist and genre – such as John Michael Talbot – for times when my heart or mind or soul needs the lift that only a piece of Baroque, or of gently sung prayer, can deliver me. But most is commercial music, and mostly rock (though I have come to include some country, dance, punk, blues, reggae, and so on).

Last November, I was listening to my disk of 1979 songs, and was unexpectedly touched deep in my heart by a fond memory that the almost-thirty years since have failed to dim. I was eighteen most of that year, out of high school, and studying at the local community college. I was working at a shopping center in Maryland, near the state lines with Pennsylvania and the Virginias. The world was my oyster, as they say, and the pearls were beautiful.

That summer I had an affair, or fling, or whatever you want to call it. My girlfriend (still in high school) had gone to stay with her divorced father (he lived just outside Camden, New Jersey) for the off-school months. And a friendly, perky blonde my age (actually, she'd just turned nineteen), who worked across the corridor, struck up an acquaintance with me, and soon we were driving around the area and hanging out together.

Let me stray over my firm privacy-line just enough to give her real first name here: Jane. As I was saying, though, neither one of us had pursued the other; Jane and I had somehow simply fallen into… some real fun together. She never asked if I had a girlfriend (and I don't think I ever told, either), and it mattered little to me then, at that age.

She was great, delightful company, with a sweet voice, a slightly dangerous glint to her eye (a native Marylandress, she occasionally called me "ornery", which I think I may have earned!), and I found she had an easy laugh… And I remember still her big smile more than nearly anything else about her. We never used the word "love", but there was no question that we did love our time spent together.

And all that summer, in the background – as in many a movie – there played some powerful music as our own personal soundtrack. Disco was beginning to sputter out already, punk was going strong, alternative was beginning to make inroads, rap was in its very infancy, and rock simply rocked.

Some fun songs really seemed to be written about zany Jane. ELO (watered down and slightly discoed up from their recent heyday) had "Don't Bring Me Down", where Jeff Lynne sings: "You're looking good, just like a snake in the grass!" That much, anyway, was Jane.

So was The Atlanta Rhythm Section's "Spooky": "Love is kind of crazy with a spooky little girl like you!" The song was playing once when I visited her at work; I pointed that out to her, and she just grinned.

Even The Knack's "My Sharona" fit us, in a way, with the lines "When are you going to get to me? Is it just a matter of time? Is it a destiny?" Although that particular song stands in our soundtrack mostly for its eager beat than for any of its words.

But for the feel now, to me, of that innocent summer, nothing hits it quite so accurately as two songs charted by The Commodores that year. The melody-line of "Sail On" is soft and almost melancholic, even while the lyrics tell of a bitter breakup – which Jane and I never had. (More in a moment.) Walking away from it all, Lionel Ritchie is singing "It was plain to see that a small-town boy like me just wasn't your cup of tea; that was wishful thinking." Not so with Jane; our teacup was overflowing.

Nor do their lyrics of their other 1979 charter, "Still", describe us either, apart from "We played the games that people play; …somehow I know, deep in my heart, you needed me…" Yet both these songs, with their gentle rhythms, and the wistful recollections the notes elicit, bring back our sudden summer more than any other.

It was simply a fun summer, made light and fun and wonderfully memorable by how we had found ourselves in each other's arms and lives. Come September, though, my girlfriend returned, and I lost the job that had put me in Janie's world. We did bump into each other occasionally over the next couple years, and just between the two of us I could still feel that current, see that spark in her eye and slight twitch to her mouth that told me she hadn't forgotten our summer.

What a coincidence, eh?

That autumn, a revamped Jefferson Starship released a single named, interestingly, "Jane", though only the title was anything like her. I went with my girlfriend up to her father's home near Camden over Thanksgiving, and at one point that song came on the radio. I startled my girlfriend by doing a great air-guitar over the song's bridge; likely she didn't see the wisp of sadness behind my eyes.

Jane and I each went on to date others, and married them. I hope she did well, and much better than I did. Certainly there'd been a potential there that could have been pursued, instead of turned away from, when the world grew cooler again.

But I don't regret where the years since have brought me, most especially my daughters, and my ever-growing faith, and deep peace of heart and soul. I have no desire to find this girl Jane (now a forty-something woman, somehow) and reminisce with her, even while my heart glances back occasionally as I grow older and continue directing my life along a path far different from any she or I (or she and I) would have considered treading back then.

I think, though, if somehow we saw each other again, her eye would still show me that little spark, even while I sincerely shake her husband's hand, and mention my plans for the seminary. That's okay; no regrets. My life is richer for her having passed through it so briefly, and I thank her.

And so, with this cast of mind while I listened to one of those Commodores songs last November, I found a bit of verse writing itself in my head, and I typed it up as soon as I got home. I'd like to put it out there today for this lass (and the eighteen-year-old she touched). This is because I was listening to some of that summer's music again today and this past weekend; sometimes quite a few years can melt away, inside.

Often in my life, as a relationship's grown, or fallen apart, I've found myself cathartically putting some of my thoughts and feelings into poetry (most of it lousy), some of which I may unload on my blog from time to time. I'll offer a few cruddy samples here, sometimes, as some more of my Steal My Stuff!, but the few better pieces, when I post them here at all, are still very much mine, and may yet be part of something larger published on actual paper. So they're still mine, folks; besides, I have the originals, and the drafts. Heh-heh.

I never wrote one at the time for Jane, though. So now, nearly three decades later, Jane, this one's all for you. Take care, my friend.

Prayer for Janie

So many years down this twisted road,
Far-traveled this heart from maverick meander;
Now a moment, some minutes, of music
     that played behind us those nights

The notes and voice unchanged through time,
And thus my heart feels you close, and clearly;
Too, my arms and hands – even fingers –
     recall afresh your softness, warmth

A smile (some gold, a halo) alit before me;
Work and duties finished, evening opened,
Whispers in the night down roads I'll never find,
     smoke or fog let loose, embracing

Private grasp, tender touch, taste of mint;
scent of summer, sense of heat... your heart
Explored together while wire untwisted
     brought in melody (and muse) and stars

Today and now, the winter draws ever nigh
Cool air and clouds and distant sun
Too long gone past our heat together
     when dark enfolded hearts unharnessed

Our play of youth, dance of lip and tongue, touch,
To years unceasing I've not surrendered
Within a soul that trusts you, too, some days recall
     eager young hands, tender wordless love

Miles away, dizzy years far driven,
I pray for you, sweet Jane, the love your trust deserved,
The hand of God about you, His peace all-filling
     the ages here inside that never left us;

That: time unthinking still carried you kindly,
Bearing you gently on through the world I left you
And at times unbidden unaging songs
     whisper yet my younger touch to you

 

Your Mother Drives a Fiat

One of the things generally overlooked about The Beatles' "Let It Be", penned by nominally Catholic Paul McCartney, is the title, and its context within the lyrics: "When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: 'Let it be'." Over the years, some of the overly analytical have seen "mother mary" to mean what in that era was also called "mary-jane", or marijuana – "420" to you young whelps. Thus pretty-boy Paul is hinting to us that he thinks best, or most calmly, with his system temporarily altered.

Others note that his mother's name was Mary, and that she died of cancer when Paul was fourteen… less than a year before he met John Lennon, aka //oo\\. These analysts see a wistful looking back to younger, more innocent times – especially with the Beatles juggernaut fraying heavily at the edges when they recorded his song. (This image is far sweeter than that painted by John's later bitter, aching ode to his own mother – killed by a drunk driver around that same time – in his characteristically simply named "Mother".)

Granted that today is Mothers' Day, here in the Disunited States. But I see in Paul's lyrics… Mother Mary herself, Theotokos, mother of God incarnate, who stood and watched powerless as her son died before her eyes.

Blow the dust off your Bibles, and flip open to Luke 1 (our Protestant cousins can find it in the dark, and are already there; for you Catholics unschooled in which books are where, it's about three-quarters of the way in). An old high priest by the name of Zechariah is confronted by an angel, and is told that his wife would bear a child who was to become a great prophet and who would pave a metaphorical path through the wasteland to his cousin, Jesus: John the Baptist.

To paraphrase a bit, Zechariah made a colossal blunder. We assume he recognized this being as an angel… yet doubted him – and this even when he knew full well that angels come to us straight from the Throne of God. He said to the angel, "Oh, yeah? Prove it. In case you didn't notice, the Mrs. and I are too old to have children. It ain't gonna happen."

Don't doubt an angel bearing great tidings – they have a direct line to the Front Office.

So this angel (a particularly mighty one named Gabriel, who was last seen some centuries earlier warning King David himself – and thus all of Israel – both of a coming devastating series of conquests of their country, and the coming as well of their longed-for Messiah) took note of his chilly reception. Wong answer, Zechariah: when you meet Gabriel, you fall on your face and do exactly what he tells you, up to and including taking on an army with the jawbone of an ox, to willingly jumping off a cliff.

And you don't tick off an angel. They might be messengers of the divine (it's what the word "angel" means in the original Greek), but they're not merely messengers: they also have some serious powers.

So Gabriel struck this old man speechless (and probably deaf, too) as punishment. Okay, I'd accept that too, if I were Zechariah (and he did) – sure beats being turned into, say, a pillar of salt, or dead on the spot.

Now, about half a year later Gabriel comes down again and visits young teenage Mary, daughter of Anna and Joachim (no, they're not in the Bible – but neither is the word "Presbyterian"), consecrated to the Temple as were many first-born. Gabriel brings similar word to Mary: she, too, would conceive and bear… not just a prophet, but the new (ah, though metaphorical) eternal King of the Jews.

Mary is an ideal role-model for all Christians: she was educated, and she wasn't stupid, yet she had a genuine humility about her, and a total trust in her God. She didn't doubt this angel, but did admit she didn't understand how this could be possible: though betrothed to marriage to Joseph the carpenter (who was very possibly a somewhat older man, and widower with children), son of Jacob, son of Matthan (etc.), she had even earlier committed herself to a life of devotion and consecration to the God of Israel and to his temple.

If angels smile, then I suspect Gabriel smiled indulgently at Mary's utter trust even in the face of the unknown she was being called to. So he explained that the conception would not be done via the usual route of human sexual mechanics, but rather through the power of God Himself which reaches into all of humanity: the Holy Spirit. Most of us – even those wise enough to be face-to-the-flagstone at this point – would look up and say, "Wait a minute. What was that?"

(Interestingly, the terminology Gabriel gives is very similar to that used in biblical descriptions of the Ark of the Covenant, which – as both your Bible and Indiana Jones will testify – carried the very real and powerful presence of God Himself. ("Ark", by the way, means "chest" here, in the sense of a protective container – e.g., "treasure chest". This has nothing to do with Noah and his floating menagerie.) So some modern Catholic mystics/theologians (e.g., convert Scott Hahn) realize that Mary became a modern-day
Ark, both metaphorically and literally; this shows up also in the Book of Revelation (11:19-12:1), where she is actually identified as the Ark of the Covenant.)

Anyway, the angel's answer satisfied Mary, and she said, simply, "Then I am God's servant. Let it be done to me just as you've said."

And there are those three words: Let it be.

Much of the Catholic Church's work is still done in Latin (publications, etc.), even while the Masses (services) and most day-to-day work have largely been conducted in each country's/region's own language for forty years now.

In Latin, as in pretty-much every language except Esperanto (which is artificial anyway), the verb "to be" is highly irregular. This means that the forms of the verb don't follow the kind of pattern that's common to most verbs. In English you have "I talk, you talk, s/he talks, we talk", etc., or even the somewhat irregular "I have, you have, s/he has". No; with "be", we've got "am, are, is; was, were; be", and all that… in one verb. Brother!

So in Latin "to be" is – anybody remember this from High-School Latin? – "sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt", or "sum, esse, fui, futurus". Fratrē!

And what we render in English as "let (her, us, them)" + "[verb]" is called the subjunctive – a big and uncommon word that just means that this form of the verb expresses a wish or even desire for something to be/happen (sometimes referred to as "contrary-to-fact conditions"). E.g., "let them eat cake"… English, being a devolved, mongrel language, can't express the concept in a single word, while Latin and its descendants (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Italian, and others) are in this instance the heart of precise brevity. Thus, Latin: "superemur"; English: "we would be conquered".

And in Latin, "let it be" has long been said as the simple "fiat"… yes, just like the humble little Italian car.

This long, long lecture has been (well, besides in honor of Mothers' Day) to provide the setup for a stinky pun.

After Mass today, I sat awhile with pun-loving Father Paul. We were discussing some serious items of the church: Eucharistic ministry, icons and other images, and so on. Finally, having leapt and bounded through a millennium or so of Church history and doctrine with him, I got ready to go and turned the spotlight to lighter fare.

"You know there's sports in the Bible, right?"

He looked at me askance and raised a grey eyebrow. "Really," I insisted. "Look at the very first line of the first book Genesis 1:1, 'In the big inning'. And in the New Testament, it says that the prodigal son stole home – there's baseball in two different places."

Do you know, Father Paul was actually half smiling at this. So I plowed on: "There's also tennis – it says in the Old Testament that Uriah served in the courts of David".

"That could also be handball," Father acknowledged. And he segued into, "Did you know the Bible says it's okay to drive foreign cars?"

I was baffled a moment, and twisted my face up – then interrupted to say, "Yes, that's right – Mary's Fiat!"

Father nodded. "And it also says that the Apostles were all in one Accord."

I was still laughing five minutes later as I got into my Honda and drove off to breakfast.