The Beauty and the Desolation

I'm going to start this with the lyrics of a song that tears my heart out every time I hear it. Last night I lay in bed (with headphones on) listening and feeling haunted by the words. Thank you, Neil Young:

 There is a town in North Ontario
Dream comfort memory to spare
And in my mind I still need a place to go
All my changes were there

Blue, blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the sky
Throwing shadows on our eyes

Leave us
Helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless
Babe, can you hear me now?
The chains are locked and tied across the door
Baby, sing with me somehow [ ... ]


The plaintive song, highlighted by pedal steel guitar, flows like a slow dance tune played in a swept-out barn lit by hundreds of fireflies. It describes life in a relatively slow northern town in Ontario, where one can see the horizon and the sky for miles. So beautiful, but so lonely, like the mood of the singer. He can remember that gloriously desolate moment, but he can't return there for real, because it would not be the place he'd left.

The song is called "Helpless", and every time I hear it, my heart aches as if someone has cracked my ribs open and exposed my heart. I'm frozen in place, staring at that midnight sky with the stars, all the stars, and seemingly thousands of Canada geese in their v-shaped flight.

I think about my own childhood in a small town in Northern Illinois. I can only remember Marseilles (pronounced Mar - SALES, I'm afraid) in grey tones -- the slushy grey of winter afternoons as I stared out at the darkening sky waiting for my dad to come home. The sickly green-grey of oncoming tornado weather; the damp grey of slogging home from school in rainboots. The wispy grey of the secrets.

Like Mr. Young, I can't go home again.