Living in a time of inconvenience

Most of the time, after work is done, there is not much different activity left. Music has been a constant and will remain so. Today, as the weather is pretty awful, rain, chilly, dreary, after grading the weekly work, I headed up to the treadmill (aka the “dreadmill”), about a year or so ago, I was looking to get rid of it since I was getting so much activity in outside: running, dog walking, golf, golf and more golf, no one seemed to want it even free so I still have it. Fast forward to now, and I don’t know what I’d do without it. It allows me to get work in every day regardless of the weather and maybe sometimes even in addition to getting out, beats the crap out of sitting in the recliner and reading my iPad! So, music….while on the dreadmill, I find it freeing to listen to music, it helps with running pace and simply distracting me from running to nowhere. I also try to go back and listen to things I’ve not listened to in a while, thus, today, I decided to revisit a 1994 album from Nanci Griffith: Flyer. I loved it when I first came upon it, but it has fallen off the radar recently. Listening to it I was reminded why I loved it. She paints beautiful pictures with her words, her voice is wonderful and the music also terrific. A few songs in began a song that could have been written about today, yet it is over 26 years old the title: A Time of Inconvenience some of the lyrics are as follows:

“I’m living in his time of inconvenience, At an inconvenient time

We’re living in the age of communication
Where the only voices heard have money in their hands
Where greed has become a sophistication
And if you ain’t got money
You ain’t got nothin’ in this land
I’ve turned my cheek
As my history fades
While the clock ticks away
Any progress we’ve made
And there they are, our children
Dumped out in these mean streets
The evil sweeps them up
And brings them to their knees
Cause’ they’re living in our time of inconvenience
They’re living in the age of communication
This is the time of greed and power
This is the time that I wish was not mine
Cause’ it’s an inconvenient time”
I played it twice as I was running, and thought how accurate it is today. This is, at best an “inconvenient” time. We are, at least most of us (believe me I know of more than a few folks who are not holding tight to the suggestions, making it harder on everyone so they are not “inconvenienced”) in a strange world, things taken for granted in the past, the idea of running to the store to pick up a single item needed or forgotten is, for the moment, on hold (again for most of us). Going on a vacation: on hold, for many simply working is either not happening or if it is out of the home, daily danger for those folks helping those of us being “inconvenienced” to keep moving ahead. Jobs lost, livelihoods threatened. Those of us who are “old” watching years of savings withering away and while I am convinced the ship will right itself, age brings with it a lack of time for said recovery for some of us. It took almost 10 years after 9-11 for things to catch up, I don’t know if I have 10 years now, I hope so, but I don’t know.
Time…just about the only thing you can never get back keeps moving forward.
Yes folks, we are in fact, “living in a time of inconvenience, in an inconvenient time”….
This entry was posted in Musings, Uncategorized and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a comment