How I Am sing and play along

She asks how I am.

read And so how am I?

My days are the usual days:

I wake up;

I go out.

What more Time goes by.

My days are exactly the days I have lived since arriving here.

In fact, how I am is amazed how this comforts me year by year.

I work and I eat.

Life is muffins and jam.

The house is nice and quiet now.

That is how I am.

Five years in these rooms read ing Hegel and Kant.

My mind is devoted to thoughts of the meaning of life.

What more could I want?

So why is it lately I find I'm uneasy all through the night?

And why even now does my skin feel explosive as dynamite?

Why does my heart pound like a battering ram?

How can she ask me how I am?

That is how I am.

Five How I am is fine!

Dear Miss March, there is nothing dramatic or new to report.

This will be short.

Morning and evening I live in my usual way.

On the day you return you will see for yourself!

Tell me, Miss March, are you happy so far from the clang and the beat of our turbulent street?

Quite often I think of our days in New York.

Though, of course, since you went I have been quite content.

Ach! I wake in the morning and all that I hear is the absence of sound.

Yes! My peace is disturbed, but the ruckus is me as my thoughts run aground.

I wanted a life by myself in these rooms,

but now all around me, another life looms.

Who asked her to come and to go and to leave me like that?

And now she expects me to send her a note?

With words, if I spoke, that would stick in my throat!

Who asked her to change how I live,

how I think,

how I am?

She That is how I am.