With the setting sun somewhere
in Chicago, and a few hours of road lag,
everything was cool.
Until the red white blue couple interrupted,
"Ex-cuuse me SIR. You are in our seat." (horn-rimmed greasy-haired JERK SNOT!)
"Oh, now, really? Then I'll scoot over." (lard breath IDIOT WIFE ABUSER!)
"No. you're by the window." (Aaaarrrghhhh!)
Newark International Airport: Delay. Crew late from Birmingham.
(and again) Delay. Water frozen in plane tanks.
Cleveland International Airport: Delay. Missed connection due to previous delays (2).
Chicago International Airport: Delay. Luggage must be hand loaded.
And in this stratosphere of time
I sit in a bubbled shell of self complacency
rummaging through thoughts on Charlie Mingus
and what he said about what Charlie Chaplin said
about LIFE. "It's a desire, not a meaning."
I believed he played the prophet well, maybe as well as the bass.
And I think about melodic 3rds & 5ths and tonal organizational schemes
And I think about all the music I've made
during my 5 weeks away from Taipei
And I think about how being a snake person
on the Chinese celestial calendar
determines the rest of my life as a
swelling crescendo of good fortune and creative bonus points.
The red white blue couple squashed in next to me -
Italo Calvino wrote a book once about Marco Polo meeting Kubla Khan in Xanadu,
and what it comes down to is this: By voyaging, one sees all the things
he may have done, or all the persons he may have been, and he
remembers those differences and holds them
deep inside as something to compare his own self journey against - this couple
is something so far away. So distant.
I have NOTHING in common, yet how is it
I know where they keep their trash? - under the sink - or where they eat
on Thursdays? - the French restaurant that's "not too expensive but not too cheap either"
I am as numb as a holiday turkey on the plates of millions of Americans,
for today I saw the sunrise of a 4:30 Central Park Time morning,
rising red-bloom between towers of steel and windows of pained souls waiting for something.
And now in Chicago, I wonder as always
whether these will be my last thoughts
as a musician/person/Corbett/thing/arrangement of natural possibilities/desirer & hater/
lover & wanter/living being
as the wrinkled tubes are pulled away from
the belly of the plane
and we begin to journey to a new place
far away in the distant future.
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