Now it is 6am. The cacophanous chorus of birds, dumptrucks and one rooster coming from a mysterious pit in this block of concrete club sandwiches is just starting up along with the faint light of day. I woke up before them of course, which is why, maybe, I'm able to write. Eyes popped open about 4:30 am and I laid there, knowing that if I beat the rooster I'm not supposed to get up, especially not on day two with the Hong Kong Inquisitors and a trip to Ancient Corinth before me. Still I laid there, letting thoughts snap, crackle, zig and zag, all up and down my wriggling, wrestling brain.
It would be fun to start a service where I lead people through Greece using trains and buses. Screw B.B. We just adventure our way through the unknown, walk when we don't feel like riding, make friends, take advice, navigate by way of ancient treasure maps...
Well, it's just an example of one of the things in my head. Logicstically it will likely prove complicated when I start analyzing it under the harsh light of day.
So I laid there rolling around in these awake dreams until finally I surrendered to my druthers, got up. Coffee. Egg and toast. Art magazine.
Oh but that makes it sound so dull, doesn't it? What if I told you that I spread into that innocuous egg and toast combination a condiment I smuggled back from the US, which in return was imported from the Carribean, a spicy sweet substinence called MANGO KUCHELA.
In essence it is made with green mangos, vinegar, brown sugar and spices and you can add it to just about anything to transport yourself to those turtle green waters of the Carribean.
I certainly have some fond memories of the mornings I woke up at unnaturally early hours on the catamaran my family chartered in the British Virgin Islands, climbing up to the deck before my first cup of coffee, just listening to those slight clanks of metal from the top of the mast as the hull rocks, creaking so slightly, nothing around you but the dark below and the dark above but just a thin line of light tracing those indigo forms, the island mountains. Just me and my grievous thoughts, my soon to be sick body, my hope of something bigger, something more meaningful as represented in that water, those mountains, just like there is probably something bigger inside of me even if I don't have the same vantage point to meditate on its majesty.
My sister, always my barometer of "cool" in spite of what a nerd she might think she is, introduced me to a band when I was still in high school called Poi Dog Pondering. There was a song on the album that I was crazy about.
Sometimes I still get it stuck in my head when I'm waiting for my toast to pop.
I looked everywhere for the MP3 but you will have to make do with the lyrics:
Before your lights quite fail
And you fall spinning singing from the same song
Pass your hand before me
Palm shining, light streaming
Speak to me your lips touch
Crackle light water spilling
tumbling down
Sing to me lull softly call quiver
Dream to me like a flame flicker
Shimmering Shimmering mirage like vision
of tranquility
Honeyflower sing suckle
oh so sweetly call to me
lure linger please
lure linger, lure linger
Cover me with youre hands unfolded
wrapped around, held like a ball
Think of me -- put all your self inside me
Then send me spinning into the sun
Dreams dreamt and thoughts thunk
Tooth brushed and watch wound
Before toast and tea
Before toast and tea
"Breakfast!" Good morning everybody,
The sun is up and there's lots of toast and jelly
Wash Wash, you gotta wash the dishes
If you're gonna eat upon 'em, ya gotta wash 'em.
You can get it if you really want,
you gotta try hard, try hard
Well, anyhoo it's a peppy number that can wake you up like Irish Spring soap if you want it.
When I was floating on the catamaran, contemplating the mountains, I was also contemplating the guitarist of Poi Dog who, with a stretch of the imagination, you might say I was dating at the time, some ten years after I first heard the toast and jelly song. He was a good lesson in what it takes to be somewhere in the periphery of a musician's attention, but that's another story; maybe one of the reasons I made the switch from jelly to kuchela.
All of that mp3 hunting has turned the hour from six to seven and now I gotta wash, wash, I gotta wash the dishes...
