Inkling or sledgehammer, it's awfully nice when an aha shows up

In the meantime, I'm one toke over the line

Birthdays have never been my thing, but the one coming up is a hefty one and I’ve been worrying on it a bit. Suddenly, a songline pops into my head. Yes, that line … “one toke over the line.”

So, here’s my question … Why is it when one of those song lyrics that show up as they are sometimes want to do as if they’re a raindrop direct from heaven … why is it that mine are never from Joan Baez, John Lennon or Leonard Cohen, but rather from some unremembered source whose lyric stuck like flypaper to some back country brain cell feeling unappreciated and unwanted at the moment? Suddenly, it’s waving its hand, saying: Me! Me!

“Well, hell,” I think … “I don’t have anything else to write about, (except an 86 year-old woman with dementia disappeared from my housing complex four days ago, the Universe put me out of commission with COVID for two weeks, ICE alerts are going off on my phone, and no one has ever heard of Jeffrey Epstein) … why that line on this day?”

(In case this song isn’t at the top of your play list, here’s the YouTube version … it is a catchy little ditty.)

Brewer & Shipley, 1971

So, I’m reading the lyrics thinking I might find some secret message from the Wisdom Keepers … nada. I’m googling the line for insight, determined to figure out why it showed up, when there it is …

Get it? I’m thinking about turning 80 and he died at 80. Monumental, huh? But, that’s not the half of it! He died on my birthday last year … yup 12/17/2024. And, he died in Branson, Mo, where he was apparently much beloved and is quoted as saying, “The traveling is hell, and the audience is Heaven.” Connection? I’ve been to Branson. There’s a message here somewheres.

Yup, the Universe at work. A lyric I probably haven’t heard for fifty years, pops up and pulls me into curiosity where I find a connection that suddenly makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about a singer I never knew, who died last year … on my birthday. Excuse me, I think I need to go sing “What a wonderful world.”

Even better, here’s Louis Armstrong doing it his way and making me fall in love with life all over again.

Louis Armstrong … What a Wonderful World

I wondered why Louis Armstrong was making an appearance on this little musical wandering … did he die at 80 also? No, he only lived to 70. However, in spite of the joy of his song, he had a hard life. He dropped out of school at 11, and was arrested at 12 and sentenced to the Colored Waif's Home.

from Wikipedia

So … “one toke over the line” and “what a wonderful world.” An unlikely duo, perhaps, but somewhere along the way, I found this definition:

One toke over the line: The act of going to a place, a step beyond the point of reason, for the purpose of knowing where that point is. I like that.

Here’s my wish for all of us in this strange world we find ourselves:

                          May we see “trees of green, red roses, too”
                               "I see them bloom for me and you."