Leonard Cohen: Like Any Dealer, He Was Watching for the Card That is So High and Wild He'll Never Need to Deal Another.

Leonard Cohen, Isle of Wight 1970Stranger Song
More nuggets that inform my life came out of this plaintive song and from that whole first album than it is healthy to admit. I still remember the small apartment in Montreal where I first heard his music with a bunch of other angsty teenagers.
A sample of the sound bites that constantly rattle in my brain from that one song:
Reaching for the sky just to surrender.

Please understand I never had a secret chart, to get me to the heart of this or any other matter.

You hate to watch another tired man lay down his hand like he was giving up the holy game of poker. 

And of course, I am still to this day:

...watching for the card that is so high and wild (I'll) never need to deal another.

The card that is so high and wild I'll never need to deal another.
Does it really exist?  I am still watching. And waiting.
Watching and waiting in CLL has a whole other meaning.  It is a wait and see stance: how is the disease behaving, and then ignore it or respond to it depending on whether it is being nasty or nice. I am long past that pleasant interlude of plausible denial. All my chips are in the game now and I grabbed what I believe to be my best card on the table. In a trial. And even it's only advertising one more shelter I can live with that.
On the Isle of Wight, Leonard performed infront of 600,000 in the early morning of August 31, 1970 not long after the final live performance of Jimi Hendrix. Talk about a change of pace. Are you experienced?
And 43 years later, the self proclaimed grocer of despair is still delivering.
Sorry for another brief diversion but where would I be without music. Cohen's song are always humming in the back of my head, and this is one of the most persistent.
Back to work. Will be blogging again this weekend.