Round and Round and Round...

I’m captive on Joni Mitchel's carousel of time. “We can’t return/we can only look behind from where we came/ and go round and round and round in the circle game…" she wrote.

I used to sing that song loudly, with extra emphasis on the repeated round and round and round.  Now I seem to just be going round, going through the motions, but without the song. I miss that music, but I dread it, too. For me, music makes everything faster.  And I am captive on this carousel. I feel it ticking as it turns and would so like to get off. There is much I want to do, to see, to experience, to accomplish. I don't want it to proceed in three-quarter time. It's fast enough now--too fast. Maybe, once upon a time I believed the ticking clock hands where merely marking time. Now I feel those hands closing, squeezing together, pushing time out like toothpaste from a tube. Day to day, round and round, every beginning the same: get up and go through the brush, wash, rinse, tone, make-up, dress routine followed by the same water with lime, coffee, cereal while I check e-mail routine. So, what? ...should we stop the carousel? Remove the batteries? Unplug it? And if we succeed, what then?

"...and the seasons they go round and round/the painted ponies go up and down..."

Neighhhhhhhh.