Waiting Standing Thinking
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
