Airport ruminations:
the Search for the Cosmic Fool.
Stuck in the airport, we stand before eternity. Only the chosen few get to throw their hats in the air. Mother has given me a biography of Coleridge. Coleridge is brooding with his ancient mariner. At school they drilled us with his monument. I’d rather be dancing with Mr. Miggymoo.
My son discovered Mr. Miggymoo among the Ibiza goldies. He’s out there in club Mecca bopping with Miggymoo, dancing in the air, a spectacle for ravers. Oh he’s swinging with the fireworks with his Shin Jin Rui crew while the whole damned ship of fools sails through oblivion. The whole pleasure cruise is dancing, dancing with Mr. Miggymoo.
Yesterday evening my mother and I looked through photo albums, one with pictures of grandchildren: many known loved images of my children and nieces, and some new images to love. At the front of the album is a picture of myself and Karin, my first wife. We are young and hopeful. Me, I was gorgeous, if cocky, a handsome winsome bastard - a happy hopeful lad.
At the end of the album is a picture of the whole family. Karin, post-accident, the two kids and I, sitting on a rock - a year before she kicked me out. Life had scoured us. My heartlessness, thoughtlessness came home to roost. No happy family. No happy after. My credit blown. Love flown. My nestlings scattered.
But here in the airport, boarding to cross oceans, I gag on chips and mayonnaise and second-hand smoke, and seal my grief again under the scurry of circumstance.
So here is a note for my daughter about how circumstance is king. The continents divide us. I horde your goodbye tears, and try to wring some gladness from my too timid soul and till I see you smiling with babies on your knee, I’ll keep your love in my pocket.
And your brother, I see him dancing in the sky above a horde of clubbers, dancing with firework, dancing with Mr. Miggymoo.
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