<div>Speaking of "journey," I instantly thought of Joni Mitchell's way too good album, "Hejira," from 1976, featuring the late genius jazz bass player Jaco Pastorius ( <a href="http://www.jacopastorius.com/">http://www.jacopastorius.com/</a> ; <a href="http://www.jacopastorius.com/music/essential/joni_hejira.asp">http://www.jacopastorius.com/music/essential/joni_hejira.asp</a> ), </div>
<div>whose playing is like a human voice complementing Mitchell, with his unbelievable fretless phrasing, on the title song "Hejira," "Refuge of the Roads, and other songs on this album, (lyrics lower down). Therefore I just now listened to this album, which will never grow old (music can be a form of immortality, despite Mitchell's despair: "chicken scratching for my immortality," as she wrote in "Hejira"), for the umpteenth time, and <strong><em>"Refuge of the Roads" stunned once again!</em></strong> "Amelia" is another gem (they're all gems), obviously composed with Amelia Earhart's risky aviator life, as a theme. The word "Hejira," a variant of "Hegira," has a profound history and meaning, as the following reference indicates:</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/hegira">http://www.answers.com/topic/hegira</a></div>
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<div id="ency_0">Hegira or <span class="shw"><strong><font color="#003399" size="2">Hejira</font></strong></span> (<span class="pointer" onmouseover="status='Click for pronunciation key';return true;" style="COLOR: blue" onclick="pw = window.open('http://content.answcdn.com/main/content/pronkey-answers.html', 'PronunciationKey', 'height=585,width=520,resizable,scrollbars');if(pw){pw.focus();}" onmouseout="status='';return true;"><span class="pron"><font face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size="2">both: hĭjī<b>'</b>rə, hĕj<b>'</b>ərə</font></span></span>) [Ar.,=<i>Hijra</i>=breaking off of relations], the departure of the prophet <a class="ilnk" onclick="assignParam('navinfo','method|4'+getLinkTextForCookie(this));" href="http://www.answers.com/topic/muhammad" target="_top"><font color="#003399">Muhammad</font></a> from Mecca in Sept., 622. Muhammad was a monotheist and preached against the polytheism of the Meccan religion. This aroused the hostility of the merchant leaders of his native city, who derived much of their wealth from pilgrimages to Mecca and its surrounding cities. Forced to flee from his enemies, Muhammad went to Yathrib (later renamed <a class="ilnk" onclick="assignParam('navinfo','method|4'+getLinkTextForCookie(this));" href="http://www.answers.com/topic/medina" target="_top"><font color="#003399">Medina</font></a>), where he became ruler. The Muslim era is dated from the first day (July 16, 622, in the Western calendar) of the lunar year in which the Hegira took place, and the abbreviation A.H. is used with that year (A.H. 1) and subsequent years.</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hejira">http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hejira</a></div>
<h2 class="def-header"><span><font size="2">Definition of <em>HEGIRA</em></font></span></h2>
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<div class="scnt"><span class="ssens"><strong>:</strong> a journey especially when undertaken to escape from a dangerous or undesirable situation <strong>:</strong> <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exodus">exodus</a> </span></div>
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<div class="variant"><span><font size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div class="variant">First Known Use: 1753</div>
<div class="etymology">
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<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px"><a href="http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=7">http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=7</a></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px">Refuge of the Roads</div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px">by Joni Mitchell</div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px"> </div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px">I met a friend of spirit *<br>He drank and womanized ^<br>And I sat before his sanity<br>I was holding back from crying<br>He saw my complications<br>And he mirrored me back simplified<br>And we laughed how our perfection<br>
Would always be denied<br>"Heart and humor and humility"<br>He said "Will lighten up your heavy load"<br>I left him for the refuge of the roads<br><br>I fell in with some drifters<br>Cast upon a beachtown<br>
Winn Dixie cold cuts and highway hand me downs<br>And I wound up fixing dinner<br>For them and Boston Jim<br>I well up with affection<br>Thinking back down the roads to then<br>The nets were overflowing<br>In the Gulf of Mexico<br>
They were overflowing in the refuge of the roads<br><br>There was spring along the ditches<br>There were good times in the cities<br>Oh radiant happiness<br>It was all so light and easy<br>Till I started analyzing<br>And I brought on my old ways<br>
A thunderhead of judgment was<br>Gathering in my gaze<br>And it made most people nervous<br>They just didn't want to know<br>What I was seeing in the refuge of the roads<br><br>I pulled off into a forest<br>Crickets clicking in the ferns<br>
Like a wheel of fortune<br>I heard my fate turn turn turn<br>And I went running down a white sand road<br>I was running like a white-assed deer<br>Running to lose the blues<br>To the innocence in here<br>These are the clouds of Michelangelo<br>
Muscular with gods and sungold<br>Shine on your witness in the refuge of the roads<br><br>In a highway service station<br>Over the month of June<br>Was a photograph of the earth<br>Taken coming back from the moon<br>And you couldn't see a city<br>
On that marbled bowling ball<br>Or a forest or a highway<br>Or me here least of all<br>You couldn't see these cold water restrooms<br>Or this baggage overload<br>Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads
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<hr align="left" width="60%" noshade size="1">
<p>^ <em>On Travelogue this line is changed to</em>: <br>A drunk with sage's eyes<br><br>© 1976; Crazy Crow Music </p>
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<p><a href="http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=234">http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=234</a></p></p></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px">Hejira</div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px">by Joni Mitchell</div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px">I'm traveling in some vehicle<br>I'm sitting in some cafe<br>A defector from the petty wars<br>That shell shock love away<br>There's comfort in melancholy<br>When there's no need to explain<br>
It's just as natural as the weather<br>In this moody sky today<br>In our possessive coupling<br>So much could not be expressed<br>So now I'm returning to myself<br>These things that you and I suppressed<br>I see something of myself in everyone<br>
Just at this moment of the world<br>As snow gathers like bolts of lace<br>Waltzing on a ballroom girl<br><br>You know it never has been easy<br>Whether you do or you do not resign<br>Whether you travel the breadth of extremities<br>
Or stick to some straighter line<br>Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock<br>They're either going to thaw out or freeze<br>Listen<br>Strains of Benny Goodman *<br>Coming through the snow and the pinewood trees<br>
I'm porous with travel fever<br>But you know I'm so glad to be on my own<br>Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger<br>Can set up trembling in my bones *<br>I know no one's going to show me everything<br>
We all come and go unknown<br>Each so deep and superficial<br>Between the forceps and the stone<br><br>Well I looked at the granite markers<br>Those tribute to finality to eternity<br>And then I looked at myself here<br>Chicken scratching for my immortality<br>
In the church they light the candles<br>And the wax rolls down like tears<br>There's the hope and the hopelessness<br>I've witnessed thirty years<br>We're only particles of change I know I know<br>Orbiting around the sun<br>
But how can I have that point of view<br>When I'm always bound and tied to someone<br>White flags of winter chimneys<br>Waving truce against the moon<br>In the mirrors of a modern bank<br>From the window of a hotel room<br>
<br>I'm traveling in some vehicle<br>I'm sitting in some cafe<br>A defector from the petty wars<br>Until love sucks me back that way<br><br><br>© 1976; Crazy Crow Music </div>
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<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px"><a href="http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=197">http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=197</a></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px">Amelia</div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px">by Joni Mitchell</div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 5px"> </div></div></div>
<div><span>I was driving across the burning desert<br>When I spotted six jet planes<br>Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain<br>It was the hexagram of the heavens<br>it was the strings of my guitar<br>Amelia * it was just a false alarm<br>
<br>The drone of flying engines<br>Is a song so wild and blue<br>It scrambles time and seasons if it gets thru to you<br>Then your life becomes a travelogue<br>Of picture post card charms<br>Amelia it was just a false alarm<br>
<br>People will tell you where they've gone<br>They'll tell you where to go<br>But till you get there yourself you never really know<br>Where some have found their paradise<br>Other's just come to harm<br>Oh, Amelia it was just a false alarm<br>
<br>I wish that he was here tonight<br>It's so hard to obey<br>His sad request of me to kindly stay away<br>So this is how I hide the hurt<br>As the road leads cursed and charmed<br>I tell Amelia it was just a false alarm<br>
<br>A ghost of aviation<br>She was swallowed by the sky<br>Or by the sea like me she had a dream to fly<br>Like Icarus * ascending<br>On beautiful foolish arms<br>Amelia it was just a false alarm<br><br>Maybe I've never really loved<br>
I guess that is the truth<br>I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude<br>And looking down on everything<br>I crashed into his arms<br>Amelia it was just a false alarm<br><br>I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel<br>
To shower off the dust<br>And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust<br>I dreamed of 747s<br>Over geometric farms<br>Dreams Amelia - dreams and false alarms<br><br><br>© 1976; Crazy Crow Music <br>------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div><span>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</span></div>
<p><span class="gmail_quote">On 9/25/10, <b class="gmail_sendername">Tom Hansen</b> <<a href="mailto:thansen@moscow.com">thansen@moscow.com</a>> wrote:</span></p>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">California State University at Monterey Bay and Fort Ord<br><br><a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/ourvacation">http://www.tomandrodna.com/ourvacation</a><br>
<br>Tomorrow . . . Big Sur.<br><br>Later, Moscow.<br><br>Tom Hansen<br>Monterey, California<br><br>"If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime."<br><br>- Jack Kerouac<br><br><br></blockquote></div>