Growing Flowers In A Desert

April 8, 2022 Jerry King Comments 0 Comment

Again I demonstrate to myself Homo Sapiens are fragile mammals. Expectation is obstructed, this is my second try, — the illusion of a stable self is dispelled. My annoyance surfaces and I express anger, expletives, desire has been frustrated… The social self, a seductive illusion, is jangled by circumstance. And so it goes. I am certain that you know what I mean.

My second attempt to have a minor medical test done failed this morning. The reasons? I might speculate about ‘who is at fault’ but in any case… later today I will try again.

This tune comes as a timely treatment for my frustration. To be alive is to feel pain. Life is friction, the quest to get what you desire. Sometimes the desire turns out to be a mistake, a miscalculation. At other times, desire is not measured, proportionate to the environment (natural, financial, existential, etc.) within which I live… How many ways can one go wrong? Many ways it seems! Is “getting it right” similar to threading a needle? A combination of favorable conditions, skill, and a good helping of luck?

Enough rumination about the course of day-to-day life. Here’s a fine song published in 1983 by a band from Scotland, Big Country. The title of the song: In A Big Country. It is a love song, a meditation about the complexity of achieving companionship with another human being.

In A Big Country

By Big Country

I’ve never seen you look like this without a reason
Another promise fallen through, another season passes by you

Shock

I never took the smile away from anybody’s face
And that’s a desperate way to look for someone who is still a child

In a big country, dreams stay with you
Like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive

I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can’t stay here with every single hope you had shattered

I’m not expecting to grow flowers in a desert
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime

In a big country, dreams stay with you
Like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive

So take that look out of here, it doesn’t fit you
Because it’s happened doesn’t mean you’ve been discarded
Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming
Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted
I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can’t stay here with every single hope you had shattered

Shock, 1, 2

I’m not expecting to grow flowers in a desert
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime

In a big country, dreams stay with you
Like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive