At the bottom of this blog posting I am providing you with the lyrics to one of those Bob Dylan songs that I listen to as I am walking around town. I think of these songs as my "Memorial Songs," and if you go down to the bottom of this blog posting, and click the link to the title of that song - "When The Deal Goes Down" - you should be able to listen to the song, while you read along with the lyrics.
The walking part is optional.
I particularly like the last two lines of the second verse of "When The Deal Goes Down." As I have said at least once, I have come to understand myself as "being a soul," and "having a body," at least as much as I can see it the other way around. Comparisons are odious, says Alma Bracken Patton, and I'm not going to defy my mother by trying to adjudicate which way of understanding ourselves is the "right" way or the "best" way. They both work, I think. The only thing that doesn't work, for me at least, is to deny the "soul" part, altogether. Whether we "are" a soul, or "have" a soul, our souls are central to our being. Our "souls" are real.
When I go walking around, I often meet people coming the other way, people who are also walking around. Often, they have dogs! With or without dogs, if we look at each other, as we pass, there is often that "flash" of connection and acknowledgement that brightens the day for both of us. EVEN with strangers! Even with people whom we don't know, and even, when we're especially blessed, when we meet and confront those whom we are prepared to, or already, dislike.
"Soul to soul, our shadows roll."
Seeing that flash of recognition - of mutual acknowledgment - makes me confident, as Dylan understands, about what's going to happen when "the deal goes down."
oooOOOooo
When The Deal Goes Down
WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN
In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildered brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down
We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say
The midnight rain follows the train
We all wear the same thorny crown
Soul to soul, our shadows roll
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down
The moon gives light and it shines by night
I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live and then we forgive
O'er the road we're bound to go
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours
That keep us so tightly bound
You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down
I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard a deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildered brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down
We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say
The midnight rain follows the train
We all wear the same thorny crown
Soul to soul, our shadows roll
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down
The moon gives light and it shines by night
I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live and then we forgive
O'er the road we're bound to go
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours
That keep us so tightly bound
You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down
I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard a deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down
Copyright © 2006 by Special Rider Music
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