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God And Death Keep Me From Poetry

(image)
Admittedly,  I had set out later than I should, but the poetry readings were to go from 7-9. Enough time to attend some of them.
However, when I was a few blocks away from the harbour ( I was also going to stop by the harbour first) I heard Latin chanting. I greatly enjoy Latin chanting, so imagine my surprise.
 It turned out there was a large tent set up in a parking lot beside the Roman Catholic cathedral. Six men were chanting a service for a small group. It seemed related (in some way) to the jazz festival happening in the city. They had mics and lights. I lingered by the  fence and listened. Evocative and effective.
I did feel I should go to the poetry readings, so off I went. But I gave in to my temptation of visiting the harbour.
As I sat looking out to sea,  an elderly, white haired man struck up a conversation. A visitor who had arrived by train for a week of vacation. The first vacation without his wife, dead these fourteen months. She was eighty-four. When he said this, he saw the look of surprise on my face.
“Bet you can’t guess my age,” said he.
I answered, with some truth, that I never answer that question.
“Eighty-one,” he said.
I granted I would have shaved a dozen years off his age.
“Married sixty years,” he said. Always had travelled with her. Always went by car. “But it wouldn’t be the same,” he said. So he took the train.
So – yes – I stayed to talk to him.
“Get up every morning to fill the day is my motto,” he said.
I answered his questions about the islands, and if the helicopters flying overhead were military, and if all the ships needed the use of the tugboats we were standing beside, and was there somewhere close he could buy magazines, and how he got this real good travel deal through CAA, and how he talks to everyone.
“Is that really the ocean out there?”
He pointed.
I nodded.
It was.
DE
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Kafka Passport Reaches Twice Expected Price At Auction

Alas, I did not get it. And to think they gave it to Kafka for nothing.

I am contemplating a novel dealing with the time frame of this passport. Kafka attained it near the end of his life so he could travel to Berlin and to sanatoriums in other countries. But, he was already doomed.

DE

Sold for US$ 37,500 (CA$ 49,742) inc. premium

Bonhams

KAFKA, FRANZ. 1883-1924. Czechoslovak Passport Signed ("Dr. F. Kafka František"), [Prague, June 1922].
Lot 182
KAFKA, FRANZ. 1883-1924.
Czechoslovak Passport Signed (“Dr. F. Kafka František”), [Prague, June 1922].
Sold for US$ 37,500 (CA$ 49,742) inc. premium
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The Convict On The Bus And The Man of Motorcycles

well, it ‘might’ have looked like this

(image)

All sorts and conditions of people take the bus (myself included) . On this particular trip of some years ago I took note of the two talkative folk who sat in front of me. One was on oe side of the aisle, the other was on the other.

Directly in front was a handsome young man in his twenties who had, that morning, just been released from penitentiary. He was on his way home. Across the aisle from him was a grizzled and bearded man in his mid-life. He had never taken a bus ride before.

 They talked. I listened.

The convicted felon (a cheerful and polite fellow) had, with a partner, robbed a grocery store. Stole the safe. Got a lot of money (thousands in the double digits). They got away with it. However, some days later, his partner got a case of the ‘guilts’ and turned himself in.  And told what had happened. And his buddy, unplanned and unwanted, soon followed. Fourteen months.

The bearded fellow, never on the bus, had a host of motorcycles and vans and such, and travelled in them. he took a header when he hit an empty pop bottle. He was a hippy from way back and more or less continues to this day. Even the bus driver recognized the van he described, famous for its art work.

The former inmate revealed how to make ‘moonshine’ from unimaginable ingredients; how to make money from ‘nicotine patches’ by cutting them into strips and selling the contents; and that cigarettes behind bars cost $15 each. Oh – yes – he also  lost his girlfriend because of his actions. “A BIG mistake,” he said.

I gotta admit, all this, plus the beautiful scenery, whiled away the time.

DE

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