friday afternoon and the universe
Cramjam of cars, halted in their highway escape from downtown. Not quite so interesting is the big picture as each driver's face, the emblem on a truck, sounds coming out of a window.
Heading back to Rochester again. Tomorrow to the Thousand Islands with mom -- but not yet, it's still afternoon.
I weave through traffic to a Sibelius symphony, practicing Complete Breath, rehashing the day. Tea, mugged from work, still too hot to drink.
Further from the city, the thick-of-it thins, and pace quickens. Can the classical, cut to electro-remixed big-band standards. //Moving//
Tea's on! Learn: small sips don't burn lips.
Road dinner, salad course. The same yellow pocketknife I bought to peel mango skin on a bus ride through Spain proves itself here, too -- this time with cucumber, a car and cruise control.
Now playing: Jack Kerouac's backed by Zoot Sims' sax, all words not heard for the openwindows' wind, but rhymes sound, (and sound fine!) and the innermost cucumber soft seedjunk is the sweetest.
Then some French. Etude. Now I can talk back to the CD. How old are your children? It doesn't listen. The post office is over there on the right. I put on my cellphone headset so as not to look silly. Forty-three and eleven make fifty-four. Not to feel silly. Ease through most of the lesson, then choke on the numbers, and heave frustration. Power off.
Road dinner, entree. I sharpen my tongue fishing meat from sunflower seeds. Thoreau (spitsound) shells out the window through curled tongue. Practice several seed extraction methods over the meal hour. Propellerheads album almost doing the driving for me. Props to The People's University.
I pull toll ticket from its lodging above the otherwise unused sun-visor, and, peeling around the exitramp curve in darkness, divine each coin's identity with my fingers and nails, counting $2.10 forward and backward in French. Nothing says Je t'aime to the tollbooth lady like a handfull of dimes, nickels and pennies.
Past the neighborhood mall-turned-palace, I look in drivers' faces at stoplight for some sort of recognition; don't they know I'm home?
The old street, and softly into the driveway, and the motion detector is the first to greet me.