Archive
04/22/10 - (2)
Passport
It's a balmy April Thursday night, 7:10 p.m. Central Daylight Time, In this echo chamber of the Midwest's loudest restaurant, A garlic-reeking, Italian-style, assembly-line, meat-market chain Located in one of St. Louis County's toniest municipalities: Frontenac, Missouri, U.S.A., Earth, Milky Way, ZIP code 63131.
This much I do know, if I know anything at all. As to where I really am, my psyche's GPS maps a digital blank. For all it knows, I could be high in the Bavarian Alps, Ensconced in Hitler's "Eagle's Nest" Kehlstein-mountain retreat, Or sizzling to a crisp, in one of Auschwitz's Topf & Sons ovens.
As easily, I could be sitting on the Gritti Palace's wooden deck, Overlooking the Grand Canal, Santa Maria della Salute, Listening to the accordionist-accompanied serenaders of the gondolieri, Filling light-shimmering nighttime Venice With the lyrical magic of its not-so-gradually-sinking past.
And for that-and-this tisket-a-tasket matter, I could be in Bangalore, Angkor Wat, Jerusalem's Old City, By the shores of Galilee, Tripoli, Dunkirk, Lake Nebagamon, Heading down Broadway, to see a Saturday matinée of Billy Elliot, Off to the races, the opera, with the Marx brothers,
In Colonel Larson E. Whipsnade's horse-drawn circus wagon, Racing not seconds ahead of a hot-in-pursuit flivver Driven by an enraged local sheriff Trying to catch up with him, before he crosses "State Line," Avoids interdiction, for P. T. Barnuming the yokel locals.
Truth be told, I'm nowhere, if anywhere at all. I'm everywhere, if nowhere, anywhere. As for who I am, I'm less than negligibly certain that I'm not, But if I am, was, will be, were, wasn't, would be, might be, should be, By some preternatural quirk of destiny, fate, then so be it,
Because it wasn't, isn't, won't be, can't be for me to prophesy, debate. Indeed, all I know, if I know anything at all, This loudest-echo-chamber-restaurant-in-the-entire-Midwest night, Is that location is just a state of mind, a vast hallucination, When death doesn't even bother asking for your tattered passport.
04/22/10 - (2)
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