May the Lord Jesus Christ protect me.
Saturday, April 6, 2019. 12:00 AM -Midnight.
“What Now My Love”
Tuesday, April 2, 2019. 11:08 PM
Hi Sonya. Was just thinking of you as I was washing my dishes. I was having an “internal conversation” with you. Just a little while ago I published something new on my blog. Do you know about my blog on the internet? This evening I published something titled: “Don’t Worry About It.” It’s the 27th entry to the blog since it was started last August 6th.
The “conversation” I was having while washing my dishes went something like this, if I can remember it, which isn’t easy, at 67. Remember, this was an “internal conversation” which means it was in the realm of silent thought . . . the thoughts of my heart toward someone I miss so much . . . for more than three decades since she has said or written a word to me . . .
I can hardly remember it, Sonya.
OK, it’s coming back into conscious memory.
Mark: Sonya, I haven’t heard from you in about 36 years. Why is that, Sonya?
Sonya: “Well, Mark, I graduated from college and you didn’t. You couldn’t even get an associate’s degree.”
Mark: “Well, that’s true, Sonya. I tried taking courses at night after work at CCRI in Warwick and in Lincoln. But, I just couldn’t get that diploma. I think, maybe it just wasn’t God’s will for me to get it. College degrees are of the world, maybe. And, maybe, God has other plans for me that are not of this world. So, He wouldn’t let me get it, the college degree, I mean. [I don’t know, for sure.]
Sonya: “And you don’t even call me Sondy. You always write my name Sonya. Why is that, Marky?”
Mark: “Well, it just seems more honorable to call you Sonya.”
Sonya: “Why, Mark?”
Mark: “Well, if you were a queen, wouldn’t Queen Sonya sound more honorable than Queen Sondy?”
Sonya: “I really don’t know, Mark.”
Mark: “Well, if I were a king, which would sound more honorable to you: King Mark, or King Marky.”?
Sonya: “Well, OK Mark. If you want to call me Sonya rather than Sandy, that’s OK. But I am NOT calling you king mark or king marky maypo or ANYTHING like that under ANY circumstances, OK buddy?”
Mark: “OK, Sonya.”
Mark: “Thank you, Sonya.”
Sonya: So, what is the address of this blog?”
Mark: https://marksimaginings.com/
Sonya: “And what is your blog about?”
Mark: “It’s about things I imagine.”
Sonya: “And what kinds of things do you imagine, Mark?”
Mark: “Well, I guess they’re imaginary things.”
Sonya: “What kind of imaginary things, Mark?”
Mark: “Mental imaginary things, I guess. I don’t know exactly how to describe it. Memories, maybe.”
Sonya: “Memories of what?”
Mark: “Memories of things that have happened in my life. And songs I remember listening to that seem to be associated with my own thoughts, songs that touch my heart.”
Sonya: “And what happens to you when songs touch your heart, Mark?”
Mark: “Sometimes they make me feel like crying.”
Sonya: “Give me an example, Mark, of a song that makes you feel like crying.”
Mark: “Shirley Bassey – What Now My Love (1962 Recording)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csBLsfe7jNs&list=RDcsBLsfe7jNs&start_radio=1
Sonya: “And in what entry of your blog is this song to be found?”
Mark: “An Open Door.”
. . .
Wednesday, April 3, 2019. 9:42 PM.
Mark: There are some other songs that are sad that ouch my heart, I mean touch my heart. They might also be in that blog entry “An Open Door.” Some of those songs are by a singer named Sandy Denny. Have you heard of Sandy Denny, Sonya?
. . .
Thursday, April 4, 2019.
Mark: “Sonya . . . are you there? I can’t hear you, Sonya . . .” [Actually, Sonya, sometimes I do hear you speaking to my heart.] And then, I think: No wonder I think of her and write to her. She’s getting to me. Like that song: “Hey Jude” and “You Were Always On My Mind.”
The Beatles – Hey Jude (Lyric Video) [HD] [HQ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiVGoHXNNTQ
ALWAYS ON MY MIND – Willie Nelson (Lyrics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQAsbAoEias
Lobo – I’d love you to want me_ (Lyrics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUCX9EddXj8
“What now, my love, now that you’ve left me . . . How can I live through another day
“Watching my dreams turn into ashes and my hopes into bits of clay
“Once I could feel
“Once I could see
“Now I am numb
“I’ve become unreal
“I walk the night without a goal
“Stripped of my heart . . . my soul . . .
“What now my love . . . now that it’s over
“I feel the world closing in on me
“Here come the stars tumbling around me
“There is the sky where the sea should be . . .
“What now my love . . .
“Now that you’re gone
“I’d be a fool to go on and on . . .
“No one would care
“No one would cry
“If I should live or die
“What now my love
“Now there is nothing
“Only my last good bye . . .”
–quoted verbatim from Shirley Bassey “What Now My Love”
Mark: Honestly, Sonya, my eyes are moister than usual now. And while I was listening to that song on YouTube, I really was touched in my heart by Shirley Bassey’s heart-felt song of love and loss.
. . .
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.”
–The Lord Jesus speaking to his apostles after his last supper with them. -John 14:1-4 ESV Study Bible.
April Come She Will – Simon & Garfunkel (Klara Mulder)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3ohZV10Y-A
Simon & Garfunkel – April Come She Will (Lyric Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNR-QRzVDZU
***
Simon & Garfunkel – April come she will
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_fK1riKv8g
april come she will – simon and garfunkel (cover)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7DqEv646jk
April Come She Will – Simon & Garfunkel (cover)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T56T5lRCFYg
***
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6X8zgGyd_c
Sonya, there is a line in the song, “April Come She Will” about “a love once new has now grown old.” Well, Sonya, what if a love once new and young is still alive even as it is maturing and what if it will grow young again by the grace of God with whom all things are possible . . . even Eternal Life. What about that, Sonya? Can you believe that, Sonya? Can you believe that love never ends, If it is of God, whose Son is our Saviour who IS Eternal Life? Can you believe in Him?
Sonya? Maybe you and I are not the dramatic type. Maybe we aren’t Romeo and Juliette. Maybe we aren’t Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal. Maybe we aren’t Archie & Edith or Alice and Ralph or Rob & Laura or Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Maybe you and I are something the world hasn’t seen yet. Maybe you and I are a new kind of couple. Sandra? You know how things happen or begin to happen in the most ordinary of ways sometimes? Would you be willing to meet me for a cup of tea [or coffee, if you prefer]? And just have an ordinary conversation with me? And not expect anything extraordinary to happen? When a sower sows a seed the seed doesn’t germinate and sprout immediately. It takes time. It takes rain. It takes sunshine. It takes wind and air and oxygen. It takes God. It takes warmth. It takes Love. It takes patience. It takes faithfulness. It takes endurance. It takes persistence. It takes rest. It takes peace. It takes forgiveness. It takes imagination. It takes thought. It takes courage. It takes writing. It takes music. It takes Spirit. It takes life. It takes experience. It takes learning. It takes letters. It takes honesty. It takes talking. It takes prayer. It takes heart and soul and mind and spirit. It takes quietness and silence and just being. It takes waiting. It takes everything he gave us, everything we’ve got. It takes pain and sorrow and loneliness.
Remember this inspiring song, Sonya?
The Impossible Dream — Brian Stokes Mitchell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsNJtTKdUec
And this one, Sonya?
SOMEWHERE, MY LOVE – (Lyrics)
“. . . you’ll come to me out of the long ago.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnuxhZ58IvA
Maybe Love wants to do something new with Sonya and Mark. Just noticed something, Sonya . . . there is an “a” in Sonya. And an “a” in and and another “a” in Mark. Our first names have something in common and an a in between them in the word and. And there is an “A” in the name Anne, your mother’s name. And I used to watch the TV series “Annie Oakley” when i was a little boy, as little as “marky maypo” that funny little cartoon character.
Sometimes I feel like an acorn, instead of like an oak
Keeping all that I can be inside—until it makes me choke.
Writing helps me to get “all that I can be” outside of me, so I don’t choke.
I’m eating Farina at 10:51 PM. Mom used to feed us Farina for breakfast in the wintertime on school days. And she would enlist me to stir the pot while the milk and cereal were on the stove cooking. Did you help your Mom, Sandra? Mom also would send me outside to empty the trash can–even in the wintertime when it was so cold. And I would do it, Sonya; but, it was so cold! Dad would see me go out there without my hat and coat on–because i was only going to be “out there” for 2 minutes [I did it as fast as I could]. Dad would say, “Put on your coat!” And, at other times, mom would send me to go into the cellar of the triple-decker across the yard of Me mere’s property and open the bulkhead and descend into the basement to put washed clothes into the dryer; or go and get those clothes after they dried and remember to clean the filter of lint. And she would send me to Farland’s grocery store to buy a few items of food, like two loaves of Par-X bread and a half-pound of hamburg at 69 cents a pound, back then in the early 1960s. I can remember singing “Davey . . . Davey Crockett king of the wild frontier/Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee/Shot a bear when he was only three/Davey . . . Davey Crockett . . . king of the wild frontier” as I walked up Sweet Avenue on my way to Farland’s on Elm Street. And in-between the lyrics I would keep repeating the items to buy so I wouldn’t get to the store all mixed up and ask Mr. Farland for two loaves of Davey Crockett and a pound of the wild frontier. Maybe that’s why I have a good memory for things of long ago. I tried so hard to remember and do things right.
The Brothers Four ~ Try to Remember
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jV-fnarDho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEm67QbgEGY
Sonya . . . I saw my first Robin of this Spring today on my 43-minute walk in the sunshine. And then, just a few seconds later, saw three more, nearby. I had just rounded the corner after walking across the Hamlet Avenue Bridge onto Cumberland Street heading toward Clinton Street. They were on the grass between the road and the Blackstone River. (April 4th, 2019.) On my walk, I went on Carrington Avenue where I had lived in the mid-1980s. I recalled writing to you back then; and writing my return address on the envelope as “178 Carry-ing-a-ton Avenue.” I had forgotten the number of my old address, so when I walked by the house today, I took note of the number on the house: “178/180.” It is two houses away from the corner of Grove Street. Sometimes, I think of that corner as “Carrington’s Colorful Corner” because while I was living there, the house was sky blue; and later, after moving away, I came walking by there again and the house had been painted bright pink! –Even more colorful than it had been before. And recently, Sonya, there was a post on Facebook of another house on Carrington–just across the street from “178/180” and a few properties down the street that had been painted purple.
Sonya? What can you write about? I’d love to read your writing again, Sonya. Even if it’s just everyday stuff. Even if you have some gripes about me, tell me. Tell me whatever you have to say or write. Clear the air. Clear your heart. Clear your soul. Clear your mind. Or, if you can’t write a single word, then send a picture or a drawing or the title of a song or of a poem or story or novel or send a seed to me or one word or one thought or one line of literature or a card or a movie title or a dream or an “internal conversation” or a fantasy or a nightmare or a memory or a question.
How Great Thou Art with lyrics performed by chris rice
The above picture reminds me of Lake Hiawatha.
“All my best love, Sonya”
“Marky Maypo”
Mark's Imaginings 