John Prine's April Passing From COVID-19 Hurt

Sometimes during our pandemic, I wake up in a funk because the world is far from being back to normal. With a new virus, herd immunity takes a long time to develop. Yesterday a friend called to chat, asking me when I thought a vaccine would be ready. She hoped by December, but listening to the news I think it will take at least another year for the distribution part of getting a vaccine out and administered to the public to occur. So I say another year, summer, 2021 at the earliest. And that is if the government at the top has it together. Perhaps it was our conversation or the fact that again I'm not going to work today, but I woke up in a funk this morning wondering how am I going to get through another day of Coronavirus? (I paid NO attention to Zoom until reluctantly I had to install it on my computer in April. Been on it a few times, and for all I know somebody in another part of the world is now watching me as I type!👀)

What I do to handle my gloomy mood is to acknowledge it -- Yep, I'm in a funk ... yes I have a good reason to be ... ok, I'll let myself be in a funk for 1/2 hour or so. Now snap out of it! It's simply a waste of time to wallow in a woe you can do little about. So next, I refocus my mind by finding something big or small to try to accomplish. 

Also, I'm grateful to live in Manhattan within a state where we've taken this pandemic seriously. Manhattan is opening up uber slowly ... the very thing putting me in a funk! Most indoor activities ... jobs, restaurants, movies, theatre, gyms remain closed. There is nooo way to get around the science of a disease, and yet I worry about how all the businesses will survive. Some won't! And we wear masks everywhere we go. I hate my mask! It's hot and another to-do step before leaving my home. But as an adult I wear it!!

Moreover, it upset me tremendously when I heard in late March that a brilliant songwriter John Prine was on a ventilator in Nashville. He began his career in the late 60s-early 70s writing songs for my father's favorite singers, the Everly Brothers + others. I knew he had beaten lung cancer, and short of a miracle ... Well, the miracle didn't come, and he died on April 7, 2020. R.I.P. John Prine. You are one of 159,773 souls in the USA (700, 756 worldwide) and counting lost to COVID.🙁

After all these months at home, I understand his poignant song, Angel From Montgomery as never before. The protagonist is beaten down by life and inertia. Life on hold. Going nowhere for a prolonged period of time. The uncertainty. The waiting. It is painful.

When I return home at the end of the day, my apartment feels like a haven. If I have little reason to leave, the apartment feels more like a prison. The yin tries to swallow the yang!

What I know is this: Life is bittersweet. We can't escape the bitter but must not forget the sweet. Stay well my lovelies!🌹

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Lyrics: 

ANGEL FROM MONTGOMERY

I am an old woman named after my mother

My old man is another child that's grown old

If dreams were thunder, lightning was desire

This old house would have burnt down a long time ago

Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery

Make me a poster of an old rodeo

Just give me one thing that I can hold on to

To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

When I was a young girl well, I had me a cowboy

He weren't much to look at, just free rambling man

But that was a long time and no matter how I try

The years just flow by like a broken down dam

Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery

Make me a poster of an old rodeo

Just give me one thing that I can hold on to

To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

There's flies in the kitchen, I can hear 'em there buzzing

And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today

How the hell can a person go to work in the morning

And come home in the evening and have nothing to say

Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery

Make me a poster of an old rodeo

Just give me one thing that I can hold on to

To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

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