Heat and Serve

Tomorrow is a day of dread
in a sense
as people with good intentions
will ask “How was your Thanksgiving?”
and he'll be compelled
to answer out of politeness with one of the following quick options depending on his state of mind and their degree of receptivity....

a) He initially accepted a kind offer to join a family for dinner but declined at the last minute because he was writing and didn’t feel like facing anyone, especially a family of strangers.

Did send them a card, however, - a beautiful woodcut by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858) - thanking them and apologizing for his lack of initiative. He'd like to sleep with their daughter, but he also understands she's finishing an old affair and processing her emotional feelings so she doesn’t need complications. Unfinished symphonies about lust, attraction and attachment.

b) Traveled to Cambodia and removed land mines from rice paddies in the north near the Burma border where ruby smugglers laid low with their 16 year old concubines reliving a glorious past in jungles of desire before custom forms were invented. We dined on wild rice served with succulent snake. It was a long hard refreshing journey of heart and spirit. Made copious notes and detailed maps for the villagers before returning to "civilization."

c) Took off his watch and unplugged the phone. Enjoyed a hot bath, turned the hourglass over, worked on projects - including a piece about a woman who speaks every language in the world and also clearly knows a language on the planet dies every two weeks so she's busy collecting and organizing various tongues; did some minor editing on a travel piece about the Naxi matriarchal society in northern Yunnan - also some playful work creating fantastic digital images using a dragonfly as the central motif - placing it inside a Japanese meditation garden, on a plate full of leftovers with gleaming utensils and flying over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Read three books. Bought a book at an independent bookstore down the street and a copy of Plato’s Dialogues from the used section of the library for 25¢.

“It just came in yesterday,” the white haired woman said handing him change and the Dialogues.

Took a long walk in 25 year old heavy European hiking boots through mud and ice reminding him of wandering foreign countries at high altitudes in the dead of winter; sent out a poem to a web site incorporating realities about five women aid workers who committed suicide at Paradise Prison outside_______in 1997 for refusing to sing regime songs after being beaten with clubs, belts and rubber hoses filled with sand. They killed themselves with honorable intentions to end their suffering.

Made a fire, drank green tea, listened to music - Blues, Mozart, Bach. Got off the wheel sitting very still watching snowflakes fall into silence.