RAMBLINGS

Lyrics:  Ramblin’ rose, ramblin’ rose/ Why you ramble, no one knows. . .

During my freshman years of college, I took three quarters of Botany.  The third quarter was Taxonomy where we collected and dissected plants and thus learned how to classify them.  Fortunately, the guy I was dating then (and subsequently married) had a car and we made many forays out into the Ellensburg countryside in search of flowers.  Searching the ground became such a habit that I continued the practice long after the class ended.  I remember that time as I struggle today with another acquired habit, collecting articles and ideas pertinent to this blog.  I say struggle because I’m questioning the purpose of continuing the blog.  Loyal readers may have noticed that this writer skipped June and July.  I’m in transition.  But, aren’t we always in transition, adapting if we’re lucky to the demand of changing times and circumstances?  For example, when did we move from seven-digit dialing to ten-digit dialing?

Am I the only person on earth who doesn’t have a Smart Phone?  My family is pressuring me to get one so that I can text.  Texts are immediate; emails take a nano second longer and are passe (def: not youthful).  Letters take even longer.  Remember letters?  During the basement purge, I came upon a delightful book that demanded rereading; an entire book written in letters.  (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.)  If possible, it was even better the second time around.

I also came across a stash of old letters from loved ones; my grandmother, my mom from when we lived away, a beloved high school teacher, friends, and even a postcard from Patch Adams, and two letters from Dorothy Gilman, author of the very popular Mrs. Pollifax mystery series.  She apologized for the delay in answering my letter explaining that she’d been recovering from pneumonia secondary to tomb dust while doing research for a book in Egypt.  Now, how many people do you know who’ve contacted pneumonia from tomb dust?  My friend, Maxine, now in her eighties, still exchanges letters with a pen pal in England.  They’ve been writing to each other now for well over sixty years.

I understand the need for people in business to have immediate contact with their “people,” and for parents with their children, and young people with their friends because long gone are the days when one tied up the only family phone talking to their BFF.  For now, I will stick with my old flip-phone (to be used in case of an emergency) and treasure the emails I get daily from my dear cousin still willing to spend some time on me the old way even though she’s hip and communicates with her thumbs.

Lyrics:  Wild and wind-blown/ that’s how you’ve grown/ Who can cling to a ramblin’ rose?  (Writers Joe and Noel Sherman)

Five Years Later

Lyrics:  And if you knew him/ You would understand just why/ As I remember him/ I cry.

This past week I entered another widow’s life.  Renown author, Joan Didion, wrote in poignant detail about the death of her husband of forty years and the year that followed in, The Year of Magical Thinking.  She discerned movement from grieving to mourning.  It’s been five years since the Rose Man died and I will always mourn the loss of him but I no longer grieve.  Didion describes grief as passive whereas mourning is the act of dealing with grief.  I suppose there’s still an element of magical thinking in my mourning; that he’s proud of me, proud of my accomplishment in purging the basement of its collection of over-abundance, and how I’ve continued to care for his roses.  In February, I pruned all 68 rose bushes by myself and they thrive.  (I have to remind myself that the same entity that created roses also created weeds.)

Time guides mourning.  Time is the school in which we learn.  You assume responsibilities that were his and wonder why we didn’t take care of certain things before he died.  I’ve often joked that I have a PhD in denial.  Everyone is going to die; we know that, and he had a terminal health condition, renal failure.  Still, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t bring him home from the hospital that time.  I always had before, many times.  Grief was there.  Deal with it!  And you do.  The minister tells us that “Grief is a gift we carry,” perhaps an even better definition of mourning.

There was a lot of grief attached to the waste in the basement and it was time to let it go.  My sweet helper read me like a book.  There was the happy and energetic discovery of a special something that she knew I would choose to keep, at least for now.  Then, there were those items that carried grief because they had belonged to a loved one or a loved-experience in the past.  This was an energy of possession wherein you didn’t possess the item, it possessed you.  Let it go.  It was emotionally exhausting and spiritually liberating.

The mourning period continues.  Tears still want to surface when I listen to Nancy LaMott sing, As I Remember Him, but I remember him doing the soul work of caring for his roses and my heart smiles.

Lyrics:  And though I loved the boy for just a little while/ It was so wonderful/ It was so beautiful/ As I remember him/ I smile.  (Lyrics by Portia Nelson) 

 

 

 

STAYING AWAKE

Lyrics:  When you’re weary/ feeling small/ When tears are in your eyes/ I will dry them all…

I experienced a paranormal event several years ago.  Alone on retreat at a friend’s home on Lopez Island, I awoke in the middle of the night in extreme fear.  I tried all the calming tricks I knew; deep breathing, visualization, counting backwards, while listening for sounds in the other room.  Immobilized by fear, I thought my heart would beat right out of my chest.  In desperation and without thinking, I simply surrendered and turned it over, “God, you’ll have to take this one.  I can’t do it myself.”  The fear vanished immediately and, in the place of fear, there were three white wolves; one outside, one in the living room, and one laying down in the doorway to my room.  I got out of bed, stepped over the wolf in the doorway, used the bathroom, returned to the bedroom, stepping over the wolf again, got into bed, and went right to sleep.  It never occurred to me to question the form in which my prayer was answered.

The wolves have been with me since then whenever I feel the need for protection.  I’m not a fearful person however, living alone since the death of my husband, I sometimes question the placement of things (did I put that there or where did that come from?) or hear sounds at night from the basement like a woman’s voice, eventually traced to a talking smoke detector, but usually it’s the furnace in the throes of shutting down or the refrigerator ice-maker, or noises outside.  Whatever and whenever, I just lower my hand down to where the white wolf waits and I’m comforted and reassured.

A psychiatrist/psychologist/western medical doctor/scientist/and anyone in your family or mine, will tell you it’s all in my head.  Yes, it is.  Somehow that’s intended to invalidate the experience.  It doesn’t.  Remember, I was there.  Welcome to my reality; a combination of the known physical and the unknown metaphysical.

We live in a culture of multiple realities; political, religious, social, environmental, psychological, medical, conditioned beliefs, and more.  The more fundamental religious belief systems appeal to the insecure because they promise to have the answers and offer security.  Think of the Kool-Aid, Disciples of Christ pastor, Jim Jones.  That Great Fear Peddler, Donald Trump, promised the same false security, and his kind of reality appealed to many, but not the majority.  The majority must now contend with his narcissistic reality.  Psychiatrists meeting at Yale’s School of Medicine last month stated they had an ethical responsibility to warn the public about Donald Trump’s dangerous mental illness.  We wonder who’s listening?

One of my spiritual teachers once talked about enlightenment; how we wake up enlightened but then we fall back to sleep.  It’s historically imperative now that we wake up and stay awake.  Viva La France for waking up.

Lyrics: I’m on your side/ When times get rough/ And friends just can’t be found/ Like a Bridge Over Trouble Water/ I will lay me down.  Words and music by Paul Simon 1969.  (Ascolta! Gianluca Ginoble Youtube Bridge Over Troubled Water.  Beautiful.  Enjoy.)

 

 

Moonstruck

Lyrics:  When a moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie/ That’s amore/ When the world seems to shine like you’ve had too much wine/ That’s amore.

Let me tell you about “my boys.”  Not my three biological sons but rather three young Italian men I discovered on a PBS Special and whom I delighted in seeing last month in Las Vegas.  I mentioned them in the previous blog post.  You may already know them or of them: Piero Barone, Ignazio Boschetto, and Gianluca Ginoble, each with their own marvelous voice but together they are Il Volo and beyond fabulous.  Gianluca, of the sexy lips, has a rich baritone and a delivery that would make a Sunday hymn steamy and seductive.  Ignazio, of the beautiful brown bedroom eyes and ridiculously adorable mustache, is a Lyric Tenor and hearing him sing the aria from L’Elisir d’ Amore brought me to tears like Cher at the opera in Moonstruck.  Piero, of the Pavarotti voice and beguiling smile, captures and holds notes so long that you marvel in disbelief at what you’re hearing.  You could ride to Boston, coast-to-coast, on the last notes of No Puede Ser.  Their Notte Magica album is currently #1 on the Classical Albums chart.

Did I mention that they are excitingly handsome?  Italian girls adore them like rock stars. But so do their mothers and grandmothers.  The younger crowd in the USA hasn’t really discovered them yet, not being regular PBS viewers, so the audience in Vegas was, I would guess, mostly an over fifty crowd, men and women.  We sat between a woman from Japan attending her 18th Il Volo concert, and a lovely middle-age couple from Los Angeles attending their third, with plans to see them again in Verona in May.

The guys first got together as a group eight years ago when they were ages 14, 15, and 16 after competing as singles in a big voice contest in Italy.  It’s lovely to watch them work together, giving one another affectionate support.  They have bonded as close friends, know how to be silly, have fun, and yet grow as artists.  The grandfathers of two of them were responsible for discovering and nurturing their very young talent.  Ignazio was heard singing arias in his room at age three.  Now they are mentored by one of the great voices of our time and one of their idols, Placido Domingo.  Mentoring, after all, is a sacred trust given to most elders.

We almost didn’t make it to the concert.  A mentally ill man shot and killed an innocent tourist from Montana and wounded another and then escaped into a bus in front of our hotel.  We were on lock-down all of Saturday.  No one could go out or come in.  I spent time resting on the bed watching the SWAT team out front on TV.  The Strip was shut down and traffic was backed up for miles.  They eventually captured the man late afternoon and we got a taxi to take us to the theater via a circuitous back route.  Whew!

In February the House and Senate passed a new bill, signed by Trump, revoking Obama-era regulation which required gun checks for people with mental illness.

Lyrics:  When the stars make you drool just like a pasta fazool/ That’s amore/ When you dance down the street with a cloud at your feet/ That’s amore.  (Music and lyrics by Harry Warren and Jack Brown, 1953.  Signature song for Italian/American, Dean Martin.)

SOULUTION

Lyrics: There’s a song in every silence/ seeking word and melody/ there’s a dawn for every darkness/bringing hope to you and me.

When I was a teenager in the 50’s I was in love with Eddie Fisher.  A favorite activity was to hang out with my friend at Sherman & Clay in downtown Seattle where we listened to records in a private booth.  One time I shared a booth with a musician in one of the Big Bands of the day and listened to his music selections.  I felt like I was in the presence of royalty.

Music has always been an important part of my life as it is for most people.  Over the years I’ve acquired new tastes but music from the 50’s generates a lot of memories.  I went through a western phase then thanks to Texas Jim Lewis, Jack Rivers, and Fiddlin’ Neil, local TV entertainers.  Music of every decade recalls moments of our lives during those times.

Twenty-seven years ago I was excited by the operatic music of the Three Tenors: Pavarotti, Carreras, and Domingo, and years later my husband indulged me with a trip to New York to see Domingo sing Siegfried in one of Wagner’s operas.  Today I’m in love with the voices of Il Volo, three young Italians: two tenors and a baritone whose idols were/are the Three Tenors.  Thanks to PBS for showing their Notte Magica program filmed in Florence last year and, thanks to Youtube, I can watch them anytime I want and because they make me happy and give me goosebumps I watch them often.  And, thanks to my dear daughters-in-law, I will see “my boys” live this month.  Another item to check off the bucket list.

Music connects us with our emotions, with our soul.  It IS the Universal language.  Another PBS favorite is Andre Rieu, the Dutch violinist with an entourage of gorgeously gowned female musicians and tuxedoed male musicians.  In one of his programs (also on Youtube) he introduced an Argentinian musician, Carlos Buono, who played Adios Nonino (farewell father) on the bandoneon.  It hit on every emotion with the camera zooming in on many tears.  For me, it’s the goosebumps.

Cost of security for Trump Tower = $183 million/year.

Budget for the National Endowment for the Arts/Humanities = $148 million/year.

Lyrics: In the cold and snow of winter/ there’s a spring that waits to be/ unrevealed until its season/ some-thing God alone can see.  (In the Bulb There is a Flower by Natalie Sleeth.)

 

 

 

 

ARRIVEDERCE 2016

Lyrics:  Smile without a reason why/ Love, as if you were a child/ Smile, no matter what they tell you/ Don’t listen to a word they say/ ’cause life is beautiful that way.

Sometimes it feels like I’m living in a time warp; something like the movie, Groundhog Day, with Christmas repeating itself day after day only it’s year after year.  It’s the years that are going faster.  Emotions are built into the holidays with curves and surprises and we might stumble over the Ho Ho Ho’s with painfully beautiful memories of relationship losses, be they parents, spouses, friends, children, pets.  This season I attended two memorial services, one for my dear friend of sixty-six years.  Thus, Christmas for elders is often a time of reflection and we tire easily of the hustle and bustle.

This election year was a divisive one for our country and for the world.  So much hate.  It’s like seeing the world through myopic drug store readers vs. rose-colored glasses; all fuzzy and out-of-kilter.  I’m ready to let go of 2016 and yet grateful for so much.  There were many bonuses.  What do I hope for in 2017?  Laughter and lots of it.  Just this morning, I saw a piece online from the Late Late Night Show with James Corden and had a long laugh-out-loud, good ol’ fashion belly laugh.  What a great cathartic release.

Robert Fulghum writes about the healing power of laughter in his book, What on Earth Have I Done?  He recounts his experience on the Greek Island of Crete unwittingly offending the locals with his American behaviors and then earning their favor with even more insulting humor; learning their word for laughter, Asbestos Gelos, or “Fireproof laughter.”  Sounds like a good elixir for our salvation today; unquenchable and invincible laughter, “raw, reckless, and wicked.”  Need I say, use discriminately.

We have a President-elect who is wont to suck the laughter out of a helium balloon.  As a senior, I am particularly disturbed by his proposed appointment of  Rep. Tom Price of Georgia as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.  Price is known to oppose Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and women’s reproductive health.  Could humor be the antidote to a poisonous next four years?  The Donald doesn’t have a sense of humor so I therefore appoint Stephen Colbert, James Corden, the two Jimmies, Fallon and Kimmel, and Trevor Noah as my representatives to the Department of Wellness and Sane Mental Health.  I encourage you to make a New Year’s Resolution (one that you will keep faithfully) to laugh out loud every day in 2017, even if you have to fake it.  You can fool your body into catharsis.  That’s true.

Lyrics:  Keep the laughter in your eyes/ Soon your long awaited prize/ We’ll forget about our sorrow/ And think about a brighter day/ ‘Cause life is beautiful that way.  (Songwriters: Gil Dor, Acnhinoam Nime and Nicola Piovani.  Performed by Italy’s national treasure, il Volo.  Check them out on Youtube.)

 

A TEASPOON OF SUGAR

Lyrics: O beautiful for spacious skies/ For amber waves of grain/ For purple mountains majesty/ Above the fruited plains.

“I’ve been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming                           conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”  Abraham Lincoln

I’m with you, Abe, only my elderly knees tell me to find another way.  So, post-election, I bowed my head along with the minister and congregation while sitting down and found healing in the minister’s heartfelt and eloquent talk that addressed the collective grief we were feeling.  At the conclusion, the previously subdued congregation was moved to rise spontaneously in a standing ovation.  An emotional experience not to be forgotten.

Author, spiritual teacher, and visionary, Caroline Myss, compares the election to Dorothy pulling back the curtain and exposing the Wizard of Oz, in this case, as a fraud, bigot, racist, misogynist, and pathological liar, and a country willing to give control to a narcissistic TV reality star.

The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah who hails from South Africa compares Trump to the corrupt leader (Zuma) of that country with his nepotism and efforts to control the media.  One of Hitler’s first moves was to take control of the media.

With the selection of a white supremacist, Steve Bannon, as Trump’s chief strategist, our elected Wizard is not even pretending to hide behind the curtain; he’s flaunting his power, puffed up like a NFL team after scoring the winning touchdown.  Bannon is against anyone not male and white;  not just the Muslims, but Jews, Asians, Mexicans,  Blacks, and women.  Will the disabled be next as Trump demonstrated when mocking a disabled person at one of his rallies, waving his arms around in the air and making faces.  Hitler went after the disabled.  Teacher and visionary, Sandra Ingerman, writes that “The shadow side of our culture is now exposed on many levels.”  She tells us that “the shadow has to come up to be acknowledged and healed.”

So, we see protestors in the streets all around the country.  Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister writes that “Jesus left to all of us the obligation to speak up on issues that threaten to erode our humanity.”  For reasons associated with age, I will not be marching in the streets.  Scottish author and spiritual activist, Alastair McIntosh, talks about two different approaches to activism.  One is with a shovel, scooping up society’s waste and filling the dump trucks.  The other is with a teaspoon, one spoonful at a time.  The latter may take longer but with enough teaspoons we can move mountains.

America’s shadow is very dark.  Let’s make that a heaping teaspoon of love and compassion.

Lyrics: America, America/ God shed his grace on thee/ And crown thy good with brotherhood/From sea to shining sea!  (Lyric by Katharine Lee Bates; music by Samuel A. Ward.)

 

Religion and Politics

Lyrics:  Look for the silver lining/ when e’er a cloud appears in the blue/ Remember somewhere the sun is shining/ And so the right thing to do/ is make it shine for you.

We’ve all been told not to talk about religion and politics in social settings.  The subject matter is particularly volatile at this pre-election time.  And how do religion and politics fit into an essay on aging you ask?  Because a fundamental aspect and need of the elder population is spiritual, maybe it would help if we consider the current political situation from a spiritual perspective.

Jack Nicholson utters a memorable line in the film, As Good as it Gets.  His co-star, Helen Hunt, is at first annoyed by the obsessive-compulsive attentions of Nicholson’s character and finally asks him why he is so interested in her.  He answers, “Because you bring out the best in me.”  Think of your friends and family who bring out the best in you and leave you feeling good about yourself.  We all have a shadow side, a dark side, which we hide away from others or try to hide.  When our dark side surfaces we usually don’t feel good about ourselves although it has a lot to teach us.

In his book, A Different Drum, M. Scott Peck, M.D., looks at the works of James Fowler, a widely read scholar and writer on the subject of The Stages of Faith.  Peck, a Psychiatrist, gives each stage a name.  Stage 1: Chaotic, Antisocial.  the stage includes people who pretend to be loving and pious but are essentially manipulative, self-serving, and unprincipled.  It is essentially a stage of undeveloped spirituality.  Stage 2: Formal, Institutional, Fundamental.  These believers are uncomfortable with the “big mystery,” the unknown, and find security in religious dogma.  Stage 3: Skeptic, Individual.  This is the stage where people develop spiritually and where churches often lose out because rarely do they encourage doubting.  Stage 4: Mystic, Communal.  These people are not afraid of the mystery and even desire to enter into the mystery of uncertainty.

Donald Trump belongs in Stage 1.  “Being unprincipled there is nothing that govern them except their own will.  And since the will from moment to moment can go this way or that, there is a lack of integrity to their being.  They often end up, therefore, in jails or find themselves in another form of social difficulty.  Some, however, may be quite disciplined in the services of expediency and their own ambition and so may rise in positions of considerable prestige and power, even to become presidents or influential preachers.”

Does Donald Trump bring our the best in you?  Does he bring out the best in our culture or is that dark shadow growing larger and larger?

Is there a silver lining here?

Lyrics: A heart full of joy and gladness/ Will always banish sadness and strife/ So always look for the silver ling/ And try to find the sunny side of life.  Lyrics by B. G. DeSylva, music by Jerome Kern, 1920.

September Song

Lyrics: Oh, it’s a long long while/from May to December/But the days grow short/When you reach September.

I want to welcome back the Muse who was on vacation in August.  She’s reminding me of a shift that took place this summer while I was out smelling the roses.

According to the model of Life as a Cycle of One Year, found in the book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing, (Schachter-Shalomi and Miller), my June birthday propelled me into the next and last stage of the cycle, December.  It’s a new beginning, the beginning of the rest of my life that includes the end of my life.  Life, after all, is terminal.  It remains to be know how long-lasting will be the last stage.  Now that I’m aware, I’m noticing a shift in my thinking.  I no longer think long-term.

Perhaps that’s what my classmate was thinking when he announced at our 60th high school reunion that this was our last reunion.  We have had seven reunions and he and his late wife chaired them all.  He’s allowed to retire with our gratitude.  The 60th was a high point.  For some it was their first reunion, the first time to meet with classmates they hadn’t seen for sixty years.  Name tags were mandatory for identification.  We remembered our classmates who have made their transition and those who were not physically able to be with us.  We sang the high school fight song.  The room was filled with happy chatter and engaging smiles.

The whole class has now entered the last stage of the life cycle or will by the end of this year so it’s a collective shift.  “Last” seems to be a defining word for this last stage of the life cycle.  Was this our last time to be together, the class of ’56?

This month my dear friend was admitted to Hospice.  We met in 8th grade in the alphabetized study hall; I was a “W” and she was a “Y.”  She elected not to undergo further treatment that would have either prolonged her life for an undetermined time or prolonged her death, depending on your perspective.  In either case, she determined that it would not provide quality to her remaining days.  I’m able to provide her with Healing Touch treatments that comfort and relax her, and we share memories, laughing at our young-self antics.  She enjoyed looking at pictures of her classmates taken at the reunion, a happy distraction from her encroaching final days.

Each stage of the Life Cycle has a task.  The task of December is “Finding Ones; Place in the Universe.”  How would you interpret that task?

Lyrics: Oh, the days dwindle down/To a precious few/September, November . . . . . . and shall we add, December.  (September Song composer, Kurt Weill, and lyricist, Maxwell Anderson.)

In Remembrance

Lyrics: Waking skies at sunrise/ Every sunset too/ Seems to be bringing me/ Memories of you.

The Rose Man, 1935 -2012

It’s been four years today since you left this dimension for parts unknown.  Some believe that their loved ones look down on them from the celestial realm and thus know all about our earthly activities.  That might be true or it might be what some want, even need to be true.  My personal feeling is that once this life is over, it’s over as we know it here on earth.    Consciousness lives on but is uninterested in the material and is directed toward the spiritual.  People who report on their Near Death Experiences commonly notes that the love they feel in that cosmic dimension is unlike anything experienced in this material world and many aren’t keen on returning.

Dr. Mary C. Neal experienced a “pop” when her soul separated from her body after her kayak tipped over and pinned her under water for over eleven minutes.  She “shot” above the river into another realm.  “A feeling of absolute love pierced me, a feeling greater and so different from anything I’d ever known.”  (Her book is To Heaven and Back.)  I related this story to the Rose Man’s neurologist in the hospital and he responded, “It must have been very cold water.”  I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Neal and tell her what he’d said and she commented, “That’s what he needs to believe.”  In her book, Dying to Be Me, Anita Moorjani writes about her cure from cancer following a NDE.  “I had the choice to come back or not.  I chose to return when I realized that ‘heaven’ is a state, not a place. . .”  A newspaper reported on the death of a well-known comedian, a former Pentecostal minister, from a car crash.  The friend with him recounted that the man didn’t appear to have life endangering injuries but kept repeating, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.”  He then heard him say, “But why?”  And just before his last breath, the friend heard him go, “OK, OK, OK,” as if he was having a conversation with someone on the other side.

Like so many others who have lost their loved ones, I wondered what death was like for the Rose Man; who was there to welcome him to the other side, did he know peace as he made his transition, does he follow our comings and goings, will be he there to welcome us when our times comes, did our dog, Poppins, connect with him after her transition?  My husband didn’t want to die.  He told a dialysis nurse once that he wanted to live at least long enough to see his grandchildren graduate from high school.  Was he watching from upstairs when his grandson graduated in 2015, and his granddaughter this June?  Did he know that they carried the diamond pins earned for years of service to United Airlines during their commencement?  More important than the material items, did he know that they carried him their hearts and will always because love doesn’t die with death?

Naturally I miss him when he’s not here to fix a problem or help with an important decision.  But I miss him more for the little things we shared; how the community is rapidly changing with every new building, how the roses bloomed early this year, about my perfect day on the Greek Island of Mykonos, how his sister and brother-in-law were here to visit in June, that his eldest son and family are back in the country after three years in Germany, that his youngest son and daughter-in-law are moving to Oregon, that our middle son is staying ahead of the cancer that threatened his life a few years ago?  So many things to share with my partner of 55 years.  So many questions.  So many unknowns.

I’m reminded of Dr. Brugh Joy’s admonition to energy healing practitioners, “Delete your need to understand.”  He was referring to the scientific mechanism operating in the energy field that has yet to reveal it’s secrets.  He was saying that you don’t need to understand it to manifest it’s gifts.  In regard to deleting our need to understand the Big Mystery, I wonder, is that possible?

Lyrics: Here and there, everywhere/ Scenes that we once knew/ And they all just recall/ Memories of you.  Lyrics by Andy Razaf and music by Eubie Blakes, 1930.