Carrie Link

THE CIRCLE GAME

This song is stuck in my head, again. I love this song, fortunately, 'cause it looks like it's going to be rattling around up there for awhile. I've been thinking a lot about changes, and this song speaks to that for me. Nobody likes change, nobody. Change is hard. Change is scary. Change is disarming. Change changes things, and we, the humans, like some semblance of control.

This human too.

Control. Love it. Trying to let go of it, completely.

Hard.

F'ing hard.

I know that I am changing, and that is hard, too. Hard for me, and hard for the people that love me. I don't know where I'm going, only that I'm going. I don't know how I'm going to get there, only that I will. I don't know how things will be when I get wherever it is I am going, however it is I am getting there, only that they will be different.

Different = changed.

Different = bad? good? just different?

I've never had less "control" over my life, yet, less fear. I feel in alignment with "things", be they/it God, the universe, my soul's journey, what-have-you. It feels great this not knowing yet knowing, this journey without a map. It does not feel scary, but I know it is scaring the people around me, it's changing dynamics, it's upsetting the norm, it is highly unpredictable and yet to me, feels like something I can count on.

Is this making any sense?

I was raised with religion. I was taught God had a plan for our lives, and it was our job to follow that plan. Whatever God wanted for me, I was supposed to do that. It scared the shit out of me. I just knew the Big Guy wanted me to do icky things, so there was no way I was saying yes to that. I knew that He'd stick me in some isolated location with intolerable heat and bugs and have me starve, just to complete some plan He had for me. It never occurred to me once, not once, that His plan might be something I liked, something I might actually LOVE and be GOOD at!

Well, me and the Big Guy/Universe/Spirit/Higher Power are finally getting our stories straight. Turns out, my saying "yes" has opened a whole lot more doors than it's closed. AND, guess what? No isolated jungle with intolerable heat and bugs! (Does NYC count?)

Change doesn't have to be as hard as it so often is, it's our resistance to change that makes it hard. Often, things we are holding on to so tightly, aren't all they're cracked up to be, but they are familiar. They are family, we "know" them.

My new best friend, Katie Hnida was on Larry King Live tonight. She spoke about not knowing what the next chapter of her life would be, but that she was open to all possibilities. We may not all be 5' 10", gorgeous natural blondes that graduate cum laude from college while playing Division I football, BUT, we all have possibilities that we haven't even begun to conceive. We are only limited by our own self-doubt. I don't know who said it, and it probably doesn't even go like this, but I THINK someone super famous said, "If you want to doubt yourself, doubt your limits."

love.




"The Circle Game", Joni Mitchell

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of 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 make his dreams
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the 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 thru the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

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
Were captive on the 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