The Narrative Image

  A soloist improvises… accompanied by the ultimate rhythm section.  It’s Matt’s birthday, and he’s arranged a gathering at the Seaside Hostel, and I’m under the impression that he doesn’t want to draw a lot of attention to the fact that it’s his birthday, but when I arrive (with a bachelor’s token chips, store-bought layered bean-dip and case-O-beer for the pot-luck) a flaming birthday cake is being presented and his musical friends are breaking into birthday song. Later almost everyone participates in (what I believe they call) a ‘Jam’.  I look on enviously, as if watching a favorite T.V. series… but on Spanish T.V. and I’m therefore regulated to reading facial expressions - of concentration, pleasure, and happiness – which all goes to point out how foreign and out of place I am, unable to speak the language. Savoring the hope and necessities of social interaction, I miss the sunset. Later, self exiled to a vast tsunami-plain, I turn to other sources of illu...

Compare and contrast these two portraits. The first is an orangutan kept captive in a zoo. The second is me, a lab technician who has demonstrated a record of reliable attendance. Oh wait. One advantage I have over the orangutan is my relative freedom to get in my car and take a road-trip (whenever work and finances allow). We hominids have done some useful things with our brains. We’ve built shelters that protect our things, our work and even ourselves from the environment. But with our usual shortsightedness, we didn’t anticipate that the subliminal hum of ballasts and the flickering hellish green cast of fluorescent lamps would drive some of us bonkers. Every once in a while I miss the sky. Careful observation has revealed that in our universe, generally, everything is progressing from order to disorder. But there are lots of eddies - places were energy gets sucked into swirling vortexes - where, briefly, order can arise from disorder. Everyday, most of us make some small contr...