Every Grain of Sand (dustbowl)

The requested music and lyrics to Every Grain of Sand. I can't find information on who is singing...anyone recognize her?

The New Yorker August 07

Death

Tuesday August 13, 2047.

According to Deathclock.com this is my estimated date of death. The website takes your birth date and a few other pieces of information and spits out your estimated day of death and a ticker with the diminishing amount of seconds that date implies. If their estimate is correct, I have about two billion seconds left. This date awaits every one of us.

The Hindu holy men, sadus, as part of their training live at a cremation site. Christian monks are taught to not go a day without pondering their demise. Zen liturgy contains several chants about death. The following is chanted at the end of the day during a sesshin (intense practice period of over eight hours of meditation). It contains an even more haunting quality in the context of that altered state of mind:

The great matter

is birth and death

time swiftly passes by

and opportunity is lost

awaken! awaken!

this very night

your days are numbered

by one

do not squander your life

We have that chant framed and placed in our bathroom-there must be a joke there somewhere. Back to Tuesday, August 13, 2047:

For the Anniversary of my Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the date

When the last fires will wave to me

And the silence will set out

Tireless traveler

Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment

Surprised at the earth

And the love of one woman

And the shamelessness of men

As today writing after three days of rain

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease

And boding not knowing to what

W.S. Merwin

Every Grain of Sand

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed

There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.

In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good
cheer.

The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.

Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,

In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the
I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.

I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

Bob Dylan

Shot of Love

Copyright © 1981 Special Rider Music

Gratefulness in the Now

Suzuki-roshi

"Suzuki-roshi, I've been listening to your lectures for years,' I said, 'and I really love them, and they're very inspiring, and I know that what you're talking about is actually very simple and clear. But I must admit I just don't understand. I love it, but I feel like I could listen to you for a thousand years and still not get it. Could you just please put it in a nutshell? Can you reduce Buddhism to one phrase?'

Everyone laughed. He laughed. What a ludicrious question. I don't think any of us expected him to answer it. He was not a man you could pin down, and he didn't like to give his students something definite to cling to. He had often said not to have 'some idea' of what Buddhism was.

But Suzuki did answer. He looked at me and said, 'everything changes.' Then he asked for another question."

David Chadwick

Crooked Cucumber

Woody Guthrie

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.

I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.
—Woody Guthrie