"Trembling on a rocky ledge"

I wanted to be alone.

But I have no idea for how long. Sometimes you tell yourself it's always going to be that way. Lonely. For ever. The first time, it just felt like no one could ever find the way to me. I didn't want any one to, actually.

After a while, I boarded up that gate and planted a garden. People still talked to me from across 'the fence', little knowing there was a gate under the creepers. They thought I lived alone. They were right. I did.

But let's go back to the first time. That gate was open. People came through it. Most didn't want to stay. Sometimes they passed by on their way to somewhere else, always more important. People always came to see someone else. I wanted to shut the gate and open it only to people I wanted to see. But no one ever came.

One day I boarded up the gate. It was scary as ever........I hardly knew how to handle the fact that no one COULD ever come in through the gate ever again. I guess I got tired of waiting, and hoping, and expecting, and something inside just snapped. I never heard it, but something inside broke without a sound. It's like that when you smile at people as if everything's okay, and die inside, when you can tell no one that you want to open a door but are too scared to. It's basically soundless. But it is life-changing. No one may see or know.

I can remember wanting to end it. I didn't.

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If you're holding on today, dear little child, whoever you are ......... don't close any doors.

Someone will come. If it means waiting, you will be given strength. You've come to the pass; if something breaks, let it. If you are bruised, so be. But it's not over. This will pass, but you are eternal. And someone will come.

Someone will come.

Crumple in a corner, let tears fall. You've come to the pass. This is no time to throw it away. This is no time to give up. Someone will come. Leave those doors alone. If you close them now, it would all have been for nothing.

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I finally did open the gate. Someone did come. Someone who came to see me and not someone else. Someone who wasn't passing by on the way to someplace else. Someone who had started out to come to me and did.

Sometimes I still think of those days. Trembling, shivering alone on the brink and about to fall. The chill comes back.

But someone is here. The doors are open, the gate's open. And we sit together......and I can talk. I don't have to be alone.

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Thank you for helping me write this - you know who you are.

Songs come back from those days, like they do from most times of my life. It's amazing (and somewhat scary) that I don't remember too many people; I remember songs. I heard this in 1990...... it is supposedly about the nuclear age or something like that. I don't know. To me, it always was about a battle with oneself, always tempted to give up and end it.....and how there's no honour or heroism in ending it, and how you're utterly, utterly alone in your choice (and no one as alone as I). You've got to come back to fight, if you're any of a worthy soldier.



It's not as if this barricade blocks the only road
It's not as if you're all alone in wanting to explode
Someone set a bad example - made surrender seem all right
The act of a noble warrior who lost the will to fight

And now you're trembling on a rocky ledge
Staring down into a heartless sea
Done with life on a razor's edge
Nothing's what you thought it would be

No hero in your tragedy
No daring in your escape
No salutes for your surrender
Nothing noble in your fate
What have you done?

All of us get lost in the darkness
Dreamers learn to steer by the stars
All of us do time in the gutter
Dreamers turn to look at the cars
Turn around and turn around and turn around
Turn around and walk the razor's edge
Turn around and walk the razor's edge
Turn around and walk the razor's edge
Don't turn your back and slam the door on me

- Neil Peart (from "The Pass")

Suspicion

Do you suspect?

Suspicion. The one that got away. The wiring that went wrong. The break in the circuit. The "oddness" in the code. Not exactly a "bug" but just an irregularity. The slight movement of the dial where all else is dead. The girl in the red dress in Schindler's List. The unexpected, inexplicable spike on all axes. Do you suspect? "There's something there....."

The Red Tide engulfs all. A miasma hangs over the earth. Enshroud......entomb. God's clean air has putrefied. In the lower reaches, the whiff of life has rarefied, and in some places, no wind blows, fresh or stale. Particulate matter whirls about, blinding, now gone, now whipping round again to face you.

Still, life goes on, so why ask questions. Day and night. Summer and winter. Snow and burning sun. Rain and parched earth. Birth and death. Hunter and prey. Civilised and savage. Good and evil. Slave and free. Rich and poor. Master and servant. The employed and the jobless ...... season after season, on and on....for ever? and ever?

Is life going to last forever? Who cares, you say? What happens after I die? Who cares. Is there a meaning or purpose, a flicker on a dial somewhere? Not that I know of or care about. It's a mistake to ask.....just do what you got to do. Is there an afterlife? Who cares, when this life itself doesn't hold together for most. And even if it did, who cares?

Suspicion is the beginning of much. Life is odd. There's just that odd little streak about it - it doesn't all add up. There's leakage. Life is greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes, it means just too darn much and then forces us to settle for, "it's meaningless". That we're under deception is very likely. Someone's withholding the facts. For those who don't suspect, it might already be too late.

In fact those who suspect have a harder life. They need answers....what could be worse than to go around life looking for answers. Most end up patronised, then neutralised, lied to, deceived, falsely motivated, lulled into a false security and then they become a nuisance to all unsuspecting folk who are peacefully trying to live their lives without meaning. Some just end up lost. And fade away.

Folks that don't suspect beat down the ones that do. "Conform or be cast out!!!" "Leave well enough alone" "Don't sell the world, you might not even find this thing you call the soul!!!!!" "Sell out, don't try to be brave!!!" "The truth doesn't matter, as long as the sun comes up tomorrow and the bank is where I left it yesterday" "There's no meaning to any of this - and that's the meaning of it all". Wide-eyed fortune hunters rush madly about, digging up every square inch of earth; some pore over ancient texts with glassy eyes. Sightless eyes and mirthless glee, unseeing and unfeeling. Some just live, fulfill their norm, merely surviving and existing. Spike up the readings but the dial stays stone-dead.

Some suspect that some enormous wrong has occurred. They feverishly clean out the plastic surface of many a dial and find that the needles are zinging. The tests show not just disease, but in many cases, mutation. Some find life as it was meant to be, but it doesn't make news......it stays underground like fabled Atlantis.

All of this happens, but I sit in my bubble and take my ease. I don't suspect a thing. Suspicion is the only trump I hold.......and I don't suspect.

.....and the Red Tide kisses the shore.......and the Red Tide kisses the shore.........

Nature has some new plague to run in our streets
History some new wrinkle we are doomed to repeat
Fugitives at the bedroom door
Lovers pause to find an open store
Rain is burning on the forest floor
And the red tide kisses the shore

This is not a false alarm
This is not a test

Stay out of the sun, it only burns my skin
Sky full of poison, and the atmosphere's too thin
Bless the sun, the rain no more
River running like an open sore
Black wind falling to the ocean floor
And the red tide washes ashore

This is not a false alarm
This is not a test
Nowhere we can fly away
Nowhere we can rest
The party is disrupted an uninvited guest

Deadline approaches for the weary land
It used to be something but we let it run down in our hands
Too late for debate, too bad to ignore
Quiet rebellion leads to open war
Bring a sea-change to the factory floor
As the red tide covers the shore

Now's the time to turn the tide,
Now's the time to fight
Let us not go gently to the endless winter night
Now's the time to make the time,
While hope is still in sight
Let us not go gently to the endless winter night

- Neil Peart, "Red Tide"