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Hammer and Nail - Indigo Girls

Just borrowed Indigo Girl's Nomads Indians Saints from my brother, who has had this on the brain due to his recent three-row garden-planting extravaganza -
lyrics from the first track, "Hammer and Nail":

Clearing webs from the hovel
a blistered hand on the handle of a shovel
I've been digging too deep, I always do.
I see my face on the surface
I look a lot like narcissus
A dark abyss of an emptiness
Standing on the edge of a drowning blue.
I look behind my ears for the green
Even my sweat smells clean
Glare off the white hurts my eyes
Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.
I had a lot of good intentions
Sit around for fifty years and then collect a pension,
Started seeing the road to hell and just where it starts.
But my life is more than a vision
The sweetest part is acting after making a decision
I started seeing the whole as a sum of its parts.
My life is part of the global life
I'd found myself becoming more immobile
When I'd think a little girl in the world can't do anything.
A distant nation my community
A street person my responsibility
If I have a care in the world I have a gift to bring.

The verse I really like is
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.

I think some who critique leftist/progressive thinkers correctly point out that sometimes we're all talk without the matching action. I know I am guilty of that sometimes. How do we move from talk to action? Or from head to hands, as Emily and Amy ask?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hey! Three-row garden extravaganza? That sounds sarcastic.
10:37 PM
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