skating away on the thin ice of a new day

on my third beer here this rainy saturday, struggling to hash out a battle for my book without really being sure of what tactics to use (surprise! i'm not a military strategist) and beginning to feel very sentimental.

what are we to make of our memories? the first time i listened this jethro tull song i was in my first year of college in far away vermont. it was deep winter, our small dormitory in the middle of a snow-drenched field, surrounded by snow-draped cypresses. i think back on those times with wonder. the brightness of the snow now seems impossible, the cold invigorating me into a rebirth. somehow i want to go back to that, but the vermont that i knew, the long, crunching walks through the sugar maples, the quiet of an icy lake, and the moments spent sending tendrils of cigarette smoke into the bracing air are all gone. not just gone, they never truly existed, but are lodged somewhere in the synapses of my brains. false reflexes, imagined pleasures.

but surely, surely they must mean something? i did not live these moments for nothing, did not feel that passion, the heat and joy of life in the cold for no purpose. perhaps it's my mistake for seeking meaning in the humdrum of existence, but i refuse to let them dissipate into time. sometimes i think that when we die we must go back to these foggy depths.

Skating away on the thin ice of a new day

Meanwhile back in the year One --- when you belonged to no-one ---
you didn't stand a chance son, if your pants were undone.
`Cause you were bred for humanity and sold to society ---
one day you'll wake up in the Present Day ---
a million generations removed from expectations
of being who you really want to be.

Skating away ---
skating away ---
skating away on the thin ice of the New Day.

So as you push off from the shore,
won't you turn your head once more --- and make your peace with everyone?
For those who choose to stay,
will live just one more day ---
to do the things they should have done.
And as you cross the wilderness, spinning in your emptiness:
you feel you have to pray.
Looking for a sign
that the Universal Mind (!) has written you into the Passion Play.

Skating away on the thin ice of the New Day.

And as you cross the circle line, the ice-wall creaks behind ---
you're a rabbit on the run.
And the silver splinters fly in the corner of your eye ---
shining in the setting sun.
Well, do you ever get the feeling that the story's
too damn real and in the present tense?
Or that everybody's on the stage, and it seems like
you're the only person sitting in the audience?

Skating away on the thin ice of the New Day.