Waiting Standing Thinking

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Waiting standing thinking — will the weather change ? That horizon, like a stone bench holds a heavy heaven cloud, but just here the courtyard light streams through the skylight and all seems bright. Bright for now.  But what of yesterday too when ringing around with sound of hammer on steel I wandered slowly gazing. A bass clarinet breathing sounds through the parapet. A low sounding solo of calm resigned loneliness talking to the dying day. A furrow grazed his brow as I stood there looking at the far sky.But here I stand today all quiet and mourning the day like it had died already and just waiting,, waiting for the standing thinking time to finish.

“Do you think I would really leave ?  After getting to know you a bit ?” he said, not turning his head, but staring into the distance.

“I’m standing here thinking you’d already gone.  But I suppose things didn’t work out.  With the project..  So I thought.. I thought you would be.. leaving for the next place.”  she said.

“I would leave and I know that having left, I’d probably forget the place quickly.  Depending on what came next you know. But then I’ve got used to this courtyard, that crazy musician inside and you too. Standing there so thoughtful.  It’d be hard to leave again.” he said

“But that rock has to be split, you know – it cannot stay this way.  It was like a river rock to wrestle with, and now it’ll be split into two forever.  The pieces wont join back again.” she said.

“But there’ll be a left hand and right  hand part.  They could fit together and the memory of their fit might last.  Don’t you think ?”

“No, once split, those rocks will go their own way, the edges rounding off on other paths, and then they would not fit together again, even if by some faint chance they met again.” she said.

I would’ve said – “the day will die”

but for the hammer on the rock I cry,

and waiting standing thinking there

I saw him leaving

without a care

Turn of the Jangala

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Teriiska Maharaja

There would have been a mean turn eventually, once the creaking started. The fog drew it out grey actually, stuck fast in the wood from the old ship of dreams listing among the tangle jangle of it all.  Years it took of story telling bringing the ship around to this side. We got the latitude right I remember, but the clock must’ve been out since we ended up on the wrong island.  No welcome committee, no dancing girls, no laughing playing among the cock fires and shells. A few hundred miles out in thousands, but the end of our dream when the ship couldn’t hold out any longer.  Here among the jangling, the impenetrable scream of the jangling.  Where water and fog sapped the normal bright colors of the birds into a brown grey light.

By day it was that disturbing light, but by night under the stars, the jangling started longer and stronger. The sounds echoing across the dimly lit bay, with the poor broken sails flapping in a mild breeze.  Not quite but an oppressive strangling of the night across the bay.

And there we were stranded by the turn of the jangle.

Photo Maharajah.. Tersiiska:Flickr .. used with permission.

TL2 – Dayze Later – Roma – Montpellier – Nice

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Last you all heard was the beginnings of the description of the harrowing Heathrow event, whereby weary traveler with too many clothes on navigates the reverse path from the bus to terminal 5 back to the parked plane where my passport hopefully was located.  What should’ve taken 25 mins took another 3 hours, but never mind.. to be continued when I have more time.  Suffice to say, going forward in the airport maze is far easier than going backward.  Re-tracing steps with a ball of string or breadcrumbs might have helped, but still i am unsure of this part.

I did actually make my plane to Fiumicino airport, Rome and settled down for a week of conference there with an audience of about 1000 of my international colleagues.  Here are views of the local scenery about 20 mins east of Fiumicino.

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But of course it’s the streets of Rome that beckon out of the hotel and down to the city.  Get lost in the via. s. dorotea… its a small street of course on the other side of the river, but a place to sit down in a small local space with local band and music.

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Outside of course it was cooling down rapidly and we were distracted by low flying helicopter and even lower flying drones, warded off by the Polizia cars and tape barriers, protecting their pubic and the filmmakers for a Roman James Bond film.

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Some days later I found a nice restaurant down at the end of the Corso and hang a right at the Piazza di Spagna, with this beautiful nameplate in the wall.

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I think I had a drink there, but cannot be certain, certainly dropped in with my friends to someplace near there anyway.

I had planned to spend more time in the city, however duty calls, and Saturday was spent working in the hotel room and lobby bar.  Sunday flew from Fiumicino out to Montpellier, France. Avis pickup in the misty rain, and fun with Nellie at the desk who laughed everytime I tried to say something in French, and set the navigator to French as well.  Didn’t get lost too many times and my french vocab of road rules and instructions has improved dramatically without further road incident.  Drove around 3 hours out to Nice where more meetings will be held for the first few days this week.

TL1 – Day 10 – Before Stepping off the plane….

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There he was standing their impatiently near his girlfriend, crushed into a forward seat that wasn’t his by the passing passengers.  So easy to leave, so hard to go back.

‘I know, I know, Now we’ll have to wait till they all get off.’ he said.

‘I guess you left it behind, getting my bag down’, she said

I knew exactly what he was hanging back for.  It had to be his, that black vinyl jacket lying on seat 24c, down the back of the plane routing from London to Rome.  We’d just had a rough landing at Fumicino with perhaps some cross wind.  People get stressed getting out of planes and forget stuff.  I remember looking at the jacket and asking a passenger, last one to leave row 24 ‘Is that your’s’.  ‘No it’s not mine!’ she said.  Interesting short comment I thought.

So I passed the guy thinking, ‘thank God you remembered mate’, or was it his girlfriend who reminded him.  Certainly having someone with you helps when you’re packing up coats, phones, ipads, laptops, books and other paraphernalia in a hurry, whil lugging down bags from the overhead bins.  Easy to do… leave something behind.  Wish I had myself, remembered….

Much earlier that same day, I’d been on a different plane, different airline, different row, same coat, phone, jacket, bags etc. Our transatlantic flight landed in Heathrow a bit early with tons of time before having to cross over to Terminal 5.  The plane to Rome was due to leave just before 1pm that day, therefore several hours available.

The stress of Heathrow is manifest, both in passengers and ground staff of all varieties.  The uniform and walkie talkie, the nicely colour coded uniforms, the conveyor belts underground and the seemingly endless maze of escalators, stairs, lifts and corridors.  There’s probably a good reason why there are multi-faith prayer rooms, but I’ve not often been inside and did sometimes wonder from time to time whether anyone actually visited them.  I’m sure eventually though, perhaps Yoga room might be added to de-stress at times of high stress at large international airports.

You know before getting off a plane at Heathrow that there will be queues to get off, get on, get through security, catch a bus, as you travel from Terminal to Terminal.  To help with all that – the signs are colored Purple.  ‘Flight Connections’ in purple all over the place.  Yellow signs for ‘Gates’ etc.

You kind of know before catching that bus to T5 that its a long way off. ‘Better check I have everything’. Coat check, Bag Check, Phone – …… Check, Oh.. they need to see my boarding pass here, to catch the bus, .. bad check.  Boarding pass and passport not found.  Stress alarm.

After check and re-check of numerous pockets and places you haven’t put a passport in for many years, comes a realization that – It has to be on the plane. – the international flight I just left.

Some airports are super easy to backtrack.  Not Heathrow.

which terminal did i land at ?  Which Gate ? … I’ve walked half an hour already through the purple haze of flight connections.  I have to get back there.  I started back up the stairs with my bags where the only escalators were coming downward and now the clock WAS ticking.

To be continued….