Trying to call the USA from Paris.....

I was in Paris and frantically trying to call home to wish my brother a happy birthday. "USA si vous plait" wasn't working with the operator. I gave it up. Instead was invited across the hall to the room of an Australian family. We we all staying at a quaint but inexpensive hotel in the Latin Quarter. I think about that whenever I hear the Tom Waits song "Phone call from Istanbul".

I dreamed I died and went to Heaven. I was sitting in a club and I was at a table with Jack Kerouac, Charles Butkowski, Allen Ginsberg, and the apostle Paul. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane were on the bandstand. Paul kept yelling "blow that thing, man!" I kept wanting to talk to Kerouac, but Sam Kinison kept coming over to our table monopolizing all of his time between songs. Finally I just went over to the bar and sat with George Harrison, Miles Davis, and Willie Shakespeare. I paid for a round of Diet Mountain Dew. There is no alcohol there.....

That Kinison is getting annoying.

coffee time

Last night I was sitting on the moon looking down and the Earth, and it looked windy. All of the clouds around the planet were swirling as they do in Van Gogh paintings. My legs were dangling and I was afraid to lean forward much for fear of slipping off the curvature and falling. I hate the idea of falling, but in space, I guess it would be more of a drift. I could do "drift", I guess.

My coffee maker is struggling and in the mornings it moans as it goes to work. Building up all that white calcium is hard work I suppose. It creates this calcium that is like the glare off fluorescent light, the stain of a concrete skyline, the look of a widow's face. I swirl my creamer into the aromatic eddy and ponder the state of my guts. Is it stress? Am I dying?

I'm older. But am I wiser?