The Moment

What a joy to be in a specific place

At a specific time!

No other place is quite like this,

Nor any other time like this here time.

That moment I extolled is gone, but now

See what a moment has taken its place!

This is a fine, fine, moment – not more fine,

Perhaps, than that one there before,

But no less fine, I'll warrant! And this one

Is even more the-same-and-different. Blessed day!

We're all just ostriches. You'll see what I mean.

We keep our faces buried in the sand –

But sand is where the roots are, and the bugs,

Which are, to us, delicious (since we're ostriches).

It's only now and then that we have time

To point our sandy faces at the sky

And thank the blank, brute mystery for this –

This one all-precious moment, which is gone.

Then roots and bugs will call us back again;

What blinds us, feeds us – and the rest is grace.

Chris Cornell

I thought I didn't have a Chris Cornell story to share, but then I remembered going with Rob Tawse to see Mike Ford play piano at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Philadelphia – back in the early 2000s, let's say? I knew Mike did a great version of "Black Hole Sun," and I requested it, and the music that emerged from under his fingers was haunting, heartbreaking, and transcendently beautiful. What a great song, and what a glorious musical moment. Thank you for living, Chris Cornell. You are already missed.

The Good News Is Also the Bad News

We do sign our names to the stories of our lives –

However time and rain might blur them.

We do call “I am!” at the chasm of eternity,

But other echoes echo there as well –

Some fiercer, maybe, than our tender voice,

And Chance perhaps the loudest of them all,

Crying its hopeless gibberish to the stars,

Who hardly even blink in any case

To hear that wild, strange cacophony.

You are the architect of all you are –

But how closely were the plans followed?

Did fate skimp on the materials?

Were the union guys on strike the day your dreams were built –

Or just too expensive to begin with –

And did the making of your fortunes fall

To tender novices or slapdash hacks?

It doesn’t matter.  Life is not so short.

Unlucky?  Grieve it; then design again.

Design again.  Your time is not yet past.

And when you sign your name the final time,

Don’t ratify the chronicle of your slights,

But sign your life.  Be bold, and sign your life.

Your signature is on it either way.

The Tourist

I’ve been thinking I’d like to be a permanent tourist.  Not only when I’m not traveling; I mean all the time.  I’d like to think like a tourist and feel like a tourist and look up at the world around me like a tourist and maybe even breathe like a tourist too.

I’m aware that the word tourist has come to have a negative connotation – or perhaps it always did.  People associate it with ignorance, with vulgarity, with a kind of superficial engagement with the world.  Of course, it’s true that tourists sometimes exhibit these characteristics.  The irony is, when sophisticated travelers insist that they’re looking for “non-touristy” experiences, what they really mean is that they’re looking for the ultimate tourist experience – something rich, deep and pure that gets to the heart of why we travel in the first place.  They are looking to forget how achingly cosmopolitan and jaded they are and to remember that first pure jolt of sheer touristic joy experienced by the novice traveler who stumbles upon the Coliseum at some odd hour and is convinced, for a few giddy moments, that he has discovered something new and wondrous.  (He has, of course – not new to the world, perhaps, but new to him, and of course that’s the main thing.)

The tourist is the one who stares in wonder at places and things that may strike the local as quite ordinary and even banal.  Not just churches and statues, but fruit markets, wheelbarrows, children playing in the streets, cattle being driven to pasture, women in bright clothing.  These things all exist where he comes from, but not quite in the same form – or perhaps it is only the jet lag that makes him see them anew.  It doesn’t matter.  He sees them anew, that’s the point.  This is why it isn’t necessary to travel at all to be a tourist.  You only have to open your eyes.