Yellow Sky Blues and the Panic

Man looks up on a yellow sky

and the rain turns to rust in his eye

Rumours of his health are lies

Old England is dying

It wasn’t too different than any other Monday, but these days I can’t take that for granted…

The sunrise was grey through the blinds, weak and oyster. Sleep the night before was just this side of being okay, which for me is saying a lot. Sleep. An exotic locale that looks good in the brochures, but getting the money to travel is a different story. I shook it off, as I am wont to do and bootstrapped myself into another day.

His clothes are a dirty shade of blue

and his ancient shoes worn through

He steals from me and he lies to you

Old England is dying

I count my blessings when I get to see my daughter in the mornings, now. It is brief interludes of sanity preservation in between fits and starts of trying to ignore the pressure of self-dissatisfaction on one side and corporate obeisance on the other. No matter if she is trying my patience on chatting on about how she prefers her Cheerios without milk. The princess speaks, and I strain to listen, ignoring the sick betrayal of my workaday mind.

Still he sings an empire song

Still he keeps his navy strong

and sticks his flag where it ill belongs

Old England is dying

I’m numb to a lot of the commute, or getting that way I hope. Occasionally the old me rears his big noggin and barks out a curse at the stupids on the road, blind weak anger at the absurdity of sitting in traffic on the roads supposedly designed to make transit easier. It just doesn’t make sense sometimes. Well, most of the time. Aside from my daughter’s voice, music is one the few things in the world today that I take refuge in, find some space to breathe.

"You're asking what makes me sigh now

what it is makes me shudder so"

Well, I just freeze in the wind

and I'm numb from the pummeling of the snow

that falls from high in yellow skies…

There was a bit of a yellow sky that Monday, but not the kind of yellow that Mike Scott would be singing about later. I didn’t really think much about the difference when I sat down at my desk. Computer on, headphones alighting on my ears. The gnawing in my gut fluttered a bit, as if I had swallowed a sleepy bat. My hands trembled slightly as another workday began. Press the keys, and no one needs to know but me.

…where the well loved flag of England flies
where homes are warm and mothers sigh
where comedians laugh and babies cry
where criminals are televised, politicians fraternize
journalists are dignified and everyone is civilized
and children stare with heroin eyes
heroin eyes, heroin eyes
Old England !

The iPod was on shuffle, which seems is my modus operandi in the present. I’ve tried listening to albums in entirety, or groups of songs by the same artist, but…it wearies my ears, I have no way to explain why it just does. Too much, I guess, and it pushes me into impatience. A signal it may be of the diffracted and diffuse nature of my thoughts, a grayware cloud that won’t condense into rain. Until that Monday, when I had my first (near) panic attack in months. I say “near” because I’ve had some full-on panic attacks and the awfulness of those is unmistakable in its rapaciousness. This was not the same, but close. A half-brother to the real bastard itself. The memories it stirred up were unpleasant enough that I had no desire to repeat it.

Evening has fallen

The swans are singing

The last of sunday's bells is ringing

The wind in the trees is sighing

and old England is dying

I sat there, blinking, stunned, sweating and wondering what just happened. I think no one noticed the sudden bolt upright posture, the rapid breathing, the confused blinking as I tried to figure out what was happening. For once, I was glad of cubicle walls. It gave me a chance to recover gracefully. I tried not to think about the cause. On the drive home, it finally dawned on me, and I felt stupid and ashamed.

I know Mike Scott was singing about a different kind of empire when the Waterboys played in my headphones, the fading and troubled England that had lost its way when that song was written. But when I heard the lyrics Monday morning, I started thinking of the empire that used to be me, and how my borders have shrunken and my flag is flying low. I was overwhelmed by the fractures in my earth, and the losses incurred, and how it came to be.

*Lyrics used w/o permission, from “Old England” by The Waterboys. The version I’m diggin’ these days is a live take off of ‘The Best of The Waterboys, ’81-‘90’. I hope Mike Scott will forgive my impertinence, but that line about ‘rust in his eye’…damn, I wish I’d written that.