How Fortunate He Quit

I’ve got seat 26L on this flight.  That’s worth remembering.  There’s not seat before me, straight up to the bulkhead.  Unlike the lady to my left I have uninterrupted leg room.  We just had some pretty ferocious turbulence.  It would have been dangerous to have been standing.  The stewardess came and flipped own the seat and rode out the disturbance.  She didn’t buckle up.  I kept expecting her to.  I tried to catch her eye and remind her to buckle her seat belt.  I imagined precisely what I’d do once she looked my way.  But she was looking somewhere else in the cabin, demanding other passengers sit down. 

Back to the routine.  Back to my book.  Guy Crouchback is making his way through the war despite himself.  She has returned suddenly.  How do you say: “fried rice with eggs”, in English?  I can do that.  I am glad she asked me.   

“Duppy Conquerer” has come from nowhere and begins to stimulate my body and my memories.  I adjust my posture.  This is an earlier take.  I hear the classic version from ‘Burnin’’ in parallel in my mind.  This must be from two or three years earlier.  The Wailers, strong and majestic.  Their falsettos effortlessly soaring.  This was probably right before the forklift driver gig in New Jersey.  How fortunate he quit.

  

Not a light to be seen down there.  It must be cloud cover.  This is the northeast corridor of the PRC and there are almost certainly millions of lights to be seen.  They were all there when we took off.  Reading my Evelyn Waugh and stukas are bombing regularly on Crete, whenever they see lights down below.  How terrifying it must be to be bombed. 

Kool Moe Dee wants my attention now as we get up to depart the train.  The West was wild. So says Moe Dee. 

Wednesday, 10/11/17