Unspeakable Visions of the Individual

Watched "The Source" again last night, a documentary about the Beat Generation, which reminded me of the time Zach and I got tight on Guinness at some open-mic thing in Ebisu, beer and words fueling the city-hiking muse, Zach having been stuck in the office all day, the whole while longing to wander the megapolis' s narrow streets, stepping through their shadows, past shoji-papered windows that hint at shapes beyond yet refusing detail, in the paper-picture perfect way of the hidden depths of the Japanese soul, many filled with dreams of time in foreign climes, just like we two perambulating buddhas, our footfall scrapes the sound of gutter-blown leaves, shrivelled and curled like a old man's fist, shaped by long toil with the masses, beasts of burden for Moloch, who herds them onto trains, fast trains high above the streets, like Trunk Road nagas moving the branches ready to swallow Ole' Zach and I as we lumber drunkenly in their direction, which is every direction, surrounding us in this jungle, the alleys and lanes we wander sans map, making turns by whim and instinct rather than landmark, though after one sudden unexpected turn the familiar is revealed in the form of an English couple whose apartment we suddenly found, the door before us opening to reveal their surprised faces red with whisky, brows furrowed in deep-thought at the viewing of said "Source," the final thirty minutes spinning in the machine, below TV screen revealing scenes of a 1994 Boulder and a Beat event, with Zach and I both in attendance, yet our foggy minds refusing to recall any previous discourse before that time we crossed paths in beer-sodden Chiba circa 2000, building a friendship which led to this serendipitous moment, watching a beat documentary revealing random audience shots, causing Zach to suddenly yawp, "There I Am!", bringing much laughter, until seconds later, it's my turn to yell the same, finding my own face there in the dark hall a decade gone, though the face has gone all red by now with the laughter and the whisky and the friendship, in this warm apartment safe against the cold Tokyo night in an autumn coming slowly to a close.

("That's not writing, that's typing.")


On the turntable: Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall"