Category: Lament

“The crew compartment’s breaking up”

On By ©️K.T. 2026In Climate Acceptance, Climate Chaos, Climate Collapse, Crone Consciousness, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, ecocide, exposition, Funerary, Hospice, Lament, Lamentations, Life and Death, music, planetary hospice, Song, Songs, Space Shuttle ColumbiaLeave a comment

John Roderick wrote the above line and repeats it seven times(!) in his song, “The Commander Thinks Aloud”— about the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster that happened February 1, 2003

and, if I’m not careful, I will start to cry during the first verse


The Commander Thinks Aloud

Boys and girls in cars
Dogs and birds on lawns
From here I can touch the sun


Put your jackets on
I feel we're being born
The Tropic of Capricorn is below


We stall above the pole
Still your face is young
As we feel our weight return


A trail of shooting stars
The horses call the storm
Because the air contains the Charge


The radio is on
And Houston knows the score
Can you feel it, we're almost home

The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
This is all I wanted to bring home to you

Songwriter: John Roderick, The Long Winters


The Commander Thinks Aloud lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Rough Trade Publishing

this song — since the very first time i (belatedly) heard and learned about it on the Song Exploder podcast in 2016 — became an instant melancholic metaphor-lamentation for me, even while retaining it’s very visceral and intended meaning —

at first, for the climate chaos we face on our communal spaceship — Spaceship Earth,

as in, “hey, do you realize we’re floating in space?” — then, why are we [deliberately] destroying the crew compartment?

and

for our lives — for the simplicity that is both stolen and lost

in the daily struggle — of and against exploitation, repression and oppression; in the daily drama of our dis/mis/mal contentment; in the daily, unnecessary grasping, striving, amassing and hoarding — whether for – or of, wealth, land, power, influence, reputation, career, fame, control or privilege —

or, in orbiting the Earth in a shuttle or space station or landing on the Moon in a spacecraft — when we could’ve just been human beings caretaking of this Eden and of each other.

and personally,

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The Murder of an August Meadow

On By ©️K.T. 2026In August, Crone, crone chronicles, dirt road chronicles, ki, kin, Lament, Lamentations, plant beings, Poem, poetry, summer, symbiosity, wildlifeLeave a comment

full bloom,
milkweed, goldenrod, chicory,
aster,
thistle or teasel — i don’t know
they’re 7, 8, 9, feet tall
their leaf cups full of collected dew, or rain

the meadow is just all

give give give.

in fifteen minutes,
give or take,


all, gone
beneath a tractor blade

take, take, take,

take.

Continue reading “The Murder of an August Meadow” →

song[s] of my self: epigenetic lamentations

On By ©️K.T. 2026In Crone, Crone Consciousness, Epigenetic, Essay, Finnish, Knowledge, Lament, Lamentations, poet, poetryLeave a comment

During the summer of 2017 – a time of significant change in my life – including the rupture of my marriage, an upcoming “milestone” birthday, and a relocation to a quiet rural place with dark skies and an abundance of fauna and flora — I literally heard myself: I had unconsciously begun a meditative practice of singing or humming verses and melodies of sorrow, wonder, gratitude — or simply, of the mundane. They were autonomic and presumably original, lamentations.

then, serendipitously, I retroactively encountered a May 2017 piece published in Yes! magazine about the revival and history of “lament singing” in Finland.

To find that I was unconsciously, but actually, participating in a Finnish tradition that I had never experienced or even heard of — but that was somehow still within in me — in some cellular, trans-generational or ancestral place — felt like a bridge to my lineage — to all my unknown women-kin.

The lyrics and tunes occurred spontaneously over several months, and I often automatically repeated the same one over and over while working, cleaning, cooking, gardening, walking or driving. I sung or hummed them mostly while alone, but sometimes they would emerge aloud in public places — and I didn’t even realize that I was in song or know how long I had been doing it.

People who laugh, cry, sing and talk to themselves aloud in the street are not “crazy” — we are comforting, raging, celebrating, mocking and mourning ourselves, our lives, our experiences and the world.

Continue reading “song[s] of my self: epigenetic lamentations” →