Mary Chapin Carpenter

was thrumming through my mind when I woke this morning.

Her 1996 CD, A Place In The World, was my soundtrack the year I moved to America. She serenaded my quest for my own place in the world, as I went from Ohio to New Orleans, across the Southwest, and up the Pacific Coast. All my possessions in a black and purple backpack, along with three slender talisman books: poems by Sujata Bhatt and Ben Okri, and Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet.

I know most of the songs by heart. The lines float up in liminal moments:


And I want something that not only feels right
Something that's based on a real life
One thing that's worth every page of the deal
Not some old line, or rose-colored dream
Not some other time, you know what I mean
When I tell you that this is all that it seems,
and that's real

From: That's Real

And here for a moment is every place in the world and ideas are like stars

They fall from the sky, they run round your head
They litter your sleep as they beckon
They'd teach you to fly without wires or thread
They promise if only you'd let them

For the language of longing never had words, so how did you speak from your heart
Yet here is a box that swears it has heard that ideas are like stars

From: Ideas Are Like Stars

Some people need to know what to expect
Need to keep control, need to keep one step
Ahead of every chance, as if chance decides
Who it's gonna pass, who it will reward
They don't understand, chances don't keep score
They just find us when we're there to find

From: Sudden Gift Of Fate