Thoughtful Thursday

While the Baroness may be an international jet setter, let it be known that at my very core, I am a huge homer.

I exude Canadiana. I love that the beaver is the national symbol. I watch "Corner Gas" (and guffaw appropriately)(yet politely)(Jackass). I think that Tim Horton's steeped tea beats high tea at the Savoy hands down.

I will defend to the death the brilliant lyricism of Gordon Lightfoot (a national treasure) and I watch all Mike Myers movies on principal alone ("So I Married an Axe Murderer"? Sheer cinematic genius).

Today's TT comes from another brilliant Canadian songwriter, Ms. Joni Mitchell.

WHOA there! Before all you dudes out there click off - please, please, please - The Baroness beseeches you - give her lyrics a chance.

I've been thinking lately about how cyclical life seems to be; vague familiarity sometimes peering out from behind a familiar phrase, sometimes laid at our feet before us by our children, sometimes raining down from a menacing cloud that has never quite cleared.

And this loop of circular thought got this song rambling around and around in my head.

Without further ado, The Circle Game.

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky began to thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like when you're older must appease him
And promises of someday fill his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on a carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels round the town
And they tell him take your time it won't be long now
'Til you drag your feet to slow the circles down

(chorus)

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on a carousel of time
We can't return we can only look

Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.
Joni Mitchell