"Star Dust"

And here we are, in a new songbook! Not that a three years later copyright is going to matter overmuch, I feel. Still, it's weirdly satisfying to have finished one book, and to be starting on a new one. I do have one more that I could go to after this one, but then, who knows. I'll begin the search on eBay at some point. No rush, with the 114 songs in this book for starters.

So: 'Star Dust'. This is a three-pager, and it's quite a complex song. They note that this was the first song they thought of for this book, and talk about how popular it is. I'm not sure that I would know it at all if it weren't the first song in this book, I had looked some at these books over the years. I think this is a piece worth spending time with, and that I would have to do so to come to appreciate it fully. Right now, having played it through twice today, and sung it three or four times, I'm just still not sure what I think of it.

Over the years I've been good at keeping friends, and that mostly has consisted of keeping in touch with them. I'm good with addresses, phone numbers, birthdays (for the most part, though having a child disrupted my card-sending, but I do still think of everyone, do not doubt it). Some people have dropped by the wayside, some deliberately, and some that I've lost due to circumstances beyond my control. There is a good handfull that I'm still trying to locate, and I can't think of anyone that I wouldn't want to hear from today, even if I might not choose to pursue the relationship fully at this point in my life. And that is a time issue more than anything else: I have trouble finding time to talk to the friends I have, who are so very dear to me. If they could all know how much I think of them all. I wonder if everyone is like this. Somewhere, is someone thinking of me? Someone who's not reading my blog?

For a long time it was a point of honor for me to keep my friends through thick and thin, long term, be the steady soul, patient beyond all patience. Eventually life happened: at different times, a couple of large, world-rocking events led me to understand that sometimes, even if the love is there, the friendship needs to dissolve, be totally released. I know the world is mysterious, and who knows what the future will bring, but the speck of me that is still wishing for those friendships to come again is miniscule, just this side of invisible. I don't hold out any real hope, and that's the big lesson that I had to learn. It doesn't make me less of a friend, I can still even define myself as someone who holds friendships close and dear. And if there was love there, it is still somewhere suspended in time, in my memory if no where else. It had a good place in my world, and it is a stone in my foundation.

I agonize over the friendships where things are not so clear, neither here, nor then and there. Are we still friends when we haven't spoken in a year, and things weren't going so well when we stopped speaking? Am I forgiven for letting all this time pass? How about the people I just can't seem to find the time for, because I would need at least an hour or two to catch up as I want to? I want to so badly, but where is that hour? I'm always really glad when one of these friends calls me, because what I can still do is drop everything, that is still one of my gifts: Talk to me, dear friend, tell me what's new. Let me tell you I still love you. You should know right now that you're in my heart.