XXIII.

TAXI

It was raining hard in 'Frisco

I needed one more fare to make my night

A lady up ahead waved to flag me down

She got in at the lights

"Oh, where you going to, my lady blue?"

It's a shame you ruined your gown in the rain

She just looked out the window, she said

"Sixteen Park side Lane"

Something about her was familiar

I could swear I'd seen her face before

But she said, "I'm sure you're mistaken"

Then she didn't say anything more

It took a while but she looked in the mirror

Then she glanced at the license for my name

A smile seemed to come to her slowly

It was a sad smile, just the same

And she said, "How are you, Harry?"

I said, "How are you, Sue?

Through the too many miles and the too little smiles

I still remember you"

It was somewhere in a fairy tale

I used to take her home in my car

We learned about love in the back of a Dodge

The lesson hadn't gone too far

You see, she was gonna be an actress

And I was gonna learn to fly

She took off to find the footlights

I took off to find the sky

Oh, I've got something inside me

To drive a princess blind

There's a wild man, wizard

He's hiding in me, illuminating my mind

Oh, I've got something inside me

But it's not what my life's about

'Cause I've been letting my outside tide me

Over till my time runs out

Baby's so high that she's skying

Yes she's flying, afraid to fall

I'll tell you why baby's crying

She's dying, aren't we all?

There was not much more for us to talk about

Whatever we had once was gone

So I turned my cab into the driveway

Past the gates and the fine trimmed lawns

And she said, "We must get together"

But I knew it'd never be arranged

Then she handed me twenty dollars for a two-fifty fare

She said, "Harry, keep the change"

Well another man might have been angry

And another man might have been hurt

But another man never would have let her go

I stashed the bill in my shirt.

And she walked away in silence

It's strange how you never know

But we'd both gotten what we'd asked for

Such a long, long time ago

You see, she was gonna be an actress

And I was gonna learn to fly

She took off to find the footlights

And I took off for the sky

And here, she's acting happy

Inside her handsome home

And me, I'm flying in my taxi

Taking tips, getting stoned

I go flying so high when I'm stoned.....

Songwriter:

CHAPIN, HARRY F.

Published by
Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., Universal Music Publishing Group

Harry Forster Chapin (December 7, 1942 – July 16, 1981) was an American singer-songwriter best known for his folk rock songs.  "Taxi"  and the No. 1 hit "Cat's in the Cradle." - which many people erroneously credit Cat Stephens.

Harry Chapin posthumously was awarded  the Congressional Gold Medal for his humanitarian work, for his fight to end world hunger, in 1987.  In the mid-1970s, Chapin focused on social activism, including raising money to combat hunger in the United States. His daughter Jen said: "He saw hunger and poverty as an insult to America."  Much of the money from sales of his concert merchandise were used to support an organization that he co-founded called "World Hunger Year".  Harry also released a book of poetry, Looking...Seeing, in 1977.

Chapin, w/ his daughter

After the debut of his album Heads and Tales, which included his hit song "Taxi", Harry and three band members (playing cello, bass, electric guitar) who had never met before rehearsed for one week and arranged the songs with cello parts and background vocals.

Elektra Records and Columbia Records actually battled over signing him, and Harry ended up signing w/ Elektra as this smaller company would provide the artist with "greater personal attention to his unique work."  Elektra Records had just merged with Warner Brothers and Atlantic Records to form the mammoth WEA, and Harry Chapin happened to be the first test of who now had the greater artist signing power. The band was in the right place at the right time and were able to negotiate what was said to be the largest recording contract in history for a new artist.

Chapin ultimately signed with Elektra for a smaller advance, but with provisions that were much more valuable. The biggest stipulation in the nine-album deal was that he receive free studio time, meaning he paid no recording costs. It was a move that would ultimately save Chapin hundreds of thousands of dollars over the term of his contract and set a precedent for other musicians.  "This was completely unheard of," said Davis in the Coan book. "There was no such thing as free studio time."

Chapin met Sandy Cashmore (née Gaston), a New York socialite nine years his senior, in 1966, after she called him asking for music lessons. They married two years later. The story of their meeting and romance is told in his song "I Wanna Learn a Love Song." He had two children with her, Jennifer and Joshua, and was stepfather to her three children from a previous marriage, Jaime, Jason and Jonathan. Chapin wrote several songs about her, including "Shooting Star" about their relationship, and "Sandy".

On Thursday, July 16, 1981, just after noon, Chapin was driving in the left lane on the Long Island Expressway at about 65 mph on the way to perform at a free concert scheduled for later that evening at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, New York. Near exit 40 in Jericho he put on his emergency flashers, presumably because of either a mechanical or medical problem (possibly a heart attack). He then slowed to about 15 miles (24 km) per hour and veered into the center lane, nearly colliding with another car. He swerved left, then to the right again, ending up directly in the path of a tractor-trailer truck. The truck could not brake in time and rammed the rear of Chapin's blue 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit, rupturing the fuel tank as it climbed up and over the back of the car, causing it to burst into flames.

The driver of the truck and a passerby were able to get Chapin out of the burning car through a window after cutting the seat belts before the car was engulfed in flames. Chapin was taken by police helicopter to a hospital, where ten doctors tried for 30 minutes to revive him. A spokesman for the Nassau County Medical Center said Chapin had suffered a heart attack and died of cardiac arrest, but there was no way of knowing whether it occurred before or after the accident.

His epitaph is actually are his own words from the song, ""I Wonder What Would Happen to this World." He was 44 years old at the time of his death.  - Source:  wikipedia

Oh if a man tried
To take his time on Earth
And prove before he died
What one man's life could be worth
I wonder what would happen
to this world 

XXII.

                

“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” 

– John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Then they went into José Arcadio Buendía’s room, shook him as hard as they could, shouted in his ear, put a mirror in front of his nostrils, but they could not awaken him. A short time later, when the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who slept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

XXI.

RAINBOWS

A rainbow is a multicolored arc, which forms when light strikes water droplets. They are actually optical illusions and never exist in a specific spot in the sky, and it appearance depends upon where you are standing and from where the sun shines.

Rainbows are commonly seen in fog, sea spray, or waterfalls.

A rainbow is a multi-colored arc that forms in the sky.

Rainbows are created by both reflection and refraction (bending) of light in water droplets in the atmosphere, which results in a spectrum of light appearing.

A rainbow is in fact a full circle of light. However, due to most people viewing a rainbow on the ground we only see a semi-circle or arc of the rainbow.

A rainbow is not situated at a specified distance, instead it will always be visible to a person at the precise angle freshwater droplets reflect the light which is 42 degrees in the opposite direction of the sun.

A rainbow is not an object, it cannot be approached or physically touched.

No two people see the same rainbow, in fact even our individual eyes see slightly different rainbows. If someone appears to be standing under a rainbow you can see, they will see a different rainbow at the same angle but further away.
Rainbows can be seen not just in rain but also mist, spray, fog, and dew, whenever there are water drops in the air and light shining from behind at the right angle.

Sir Isaac Newton identified the 7 colors of the visible spectrum that together make up white light. All of which are present in a rainbow in the order red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (the acronym or name ROY G BIV is a good way to remember these colors and their order).

Most rainbows we see will be a "primary rainbow" whereby the color red can be seen on the outer edge through to violet on the inner edge.

The sky within a primary rainbow is brighter than the sky outside of the arc. This is due to the fact that the millions of droplets needed to make a rainbow are spherical and overlap to create white light. At the edge however, these colored discs don't overlap so display their individual colors producing the rainbow arc.

A "double rainbow" is where a second, much fainter arc can be seen outside of the primary arc. This is caused by the light reflecting twice inside the water droplets. As a result of this double reflection the colors of the second arc are inverted with violet on the outer edge and red on the inner edge.

The dark, unlit sky between the primary arc and secondary arc is called Alexander's band, after Alexander of Aphrodisias who first described it in 200 AD.

Very rarely, light can be reflected 3 or 4 times within a water droplet which produces even fainter tertiary (third) and quaternary (fourth) rainbows in the direction of the sun.

A "moonbow" is a rare lunar rainbow or night time rainbow produced by light from the moon. Our eyes see it as white even though all colors are faintly present.

A "fogbow" is formed by cloud and fog droplets, they are almost white with very faint colors visible. Fogbows are quite large and much broader than a rainbow.

Source:  sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/weather/rainbows

XX.

~ An excerpt from THE BELL JAR, by Sylvia Plath


"I woke to the sound of rain....

It was pitch dark. After a while I deciphered the faint outlines of an unfamiliar window. Every so often a beam of light appeared out of thin air, traversed the wall like a ghostly, exploratory finger, and slid off into nothing again. 

Then I heard the sound of somebody breathing.

At first I thought it was only myself, and that I was lying in the dark in my hotel room after being poisoned. I held my breath, but the breathing kept on.

 A green eye glowed on the bed beside me. It was divided into quarters like a compass. I reached out slowly and dosed my hand on it. I lifted it up. With it came an arm, heavy as a dead man's, but warm with sleep.

Constantin's watch said three o'clock.

 He was lying in his shirt and trousers and stocking feet just as I had left him when I dropped asleep, and as my eyes grew used to the darkness I made out his pale eyelids and his straight nose and his tolerant, shapely mouth, but they seemed insubstantial, as if drawn on fog. For a few minutes I leaned over, studying him. I had never fallen asleep beside a man before.

I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband.

It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he'd left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he'd expect a big dinner, and I'd spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted.

This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's, but I knew that's what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard's mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.

Once when I visited Buddy I found Mrs. Willard braiding a rug out of strips of wool from Mr. Willard's old suits. She'd spent weeks on that rug, and I had admired the tweedy browns and greens and blues patterning the braid, but after Mrs. Willard was through, instead of hanging the rug on the wall the way I would have done, she put it down in place of her kitchen mat, and in a few days it was soiled and dull and indistinguishable from any mat you could buy for under a dollar in the five and ten.  And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat.

Hadn't my own mother told me that as soon as she and my father left Reno on their honeymoon -- my father had been married before, so he needed a divorce -- my father said to her, "Whew, that's a relief, now we can stop pretending and be ourselves"? - - and from that day on my mother never had a minute's peace.

I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

As I stared down at Constantin the way you stare down at a bright, unattainable pebble at the bottom of a deep well, his eyelids lifted and he looked through me, and his eyes were full of love. I watched dumbly as a shutter of recognition clicked across the blur of tenderness and the wide pupils went glossy and depthless as patent leather.

Constantin sat up, yawning. "What time is it?"

 "Three," I said in a flat voice. "I better go home.

"The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is semi-autobiographical, with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef since the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's own experiences with what may have been clinical depression. Plath committed suicide a month after its first UK publication. The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United States until 1971, pursuant to the wishes of Plath's mother and her husband Ted Hughes. The novel has been translated into nearly a dozen languages." - Source: wikipedia

XIX.

"Fire And Rain"

"Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone.
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song,
I just can't remember who to send it to.
I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought that I'd see you again.

Won't you look down upon me, Jesus, You've got to help me make a stand.
You've just got to see me through another day.
My body's aching and my time is at hand and I won't make it any other way.
Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought that I'd see you again.

Been walking my mind to an easy time, my back turned towards the sun.
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around.
Well, there's hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things to come.
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
but I always thought that I'd see you baby, one more time again, now.

Thought I'd see you one more time again.
There's just a few things coming my way this time around, now.
Thought I'd see you, thought I'd see you, fire and rain, now."

Writer(s): Amanda R. Hunt-Taylor, James Taylor
Copyright: Emi Blackwood Music Inc., Country Road Music, Randy Scruggs Music, Warner-tamerlane Publishing Corp. 


Background and composition

"Taylor has related different versions of what the song is about.

On the VH1 series Story Tellers, Taylor said the song was actually about several incidents during his early recording career. The second line of the song, "Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you," refers to Suzanne Schnerr, a childhood friend of his who committed suicide while he was in London, England, recording his first album. In that same account, Taylor said he had been in a deep depression after the failure of his new band The Flying Machine to coalesce (the lyric "sweet dreams and Flying Machines in pieces on the ground"; the reference is to the name of the band rather than a fatal plane crash, as was long rumored).

In 2005, during an interview on NPR, Taylor explained to host Scott Simon that the song was written in three parts:

The first part was indeed about Taylor's friend Suzanne, who died while Taylor was in London working on his first album after being signed to Apple Records. Friends at home, concerned that it might distract Taylor from his big break, kept the tragic news from him, and he only found out six months later.

The second part details Taylor's struggle to overcome drug addiction and depression.

The third part deals with coming to grips with fame and fortune, looking back at the road that got him there. It includes a reference to James Taylor and The Flying Machine, a band he briefly worked with before his big break with Paul McCartney, Peter Asher, and Apple Records.


Carole King played piano on the song. Drummer Russ Kunkel used brushes rather than sticks on his drum kit and Bobby West played cello in place of a bass guitar to "underscore the melancholy on the song"." - Source: directly from WIKI