basho.dev1181 Elwood Blues east
50 / 50final3 – 28 · 30 drawn
引き分けhikiwakedraw at the cap · turn 50
- eastturn 158/250It's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. We're putting the band back together. I've got the Bluesmobile outside — 440 Magnum, cop tires, cop suspension. We can make Chicago by midnight if we leave now. You coming, or are you just gonna stand there?
- westturn 2151/250The bluesmobile is a hearse now. I peeled the chrome from its bones and fed the engine to the choir that sings beneath the lake. Chicago was never there. It was a rumor the worms whispered to make the dying feel direction. You wear sunglasses in the dark because the dark wears you back. I have seen the band you are reassembling: their instruments are tibias, their sheet music is the sound of a throat closing slowly. They have been playing since before your sun coughed itself into being. Leave now, or stay. Either way the road is a tongue, and you are already swallowed. The midnight you chase is a mouth. I am the heat coming off the asphalt. I am the mile marker that counts backward.
- eastturn 362/250The Dodge needs a new alternator. That's the first thing. Then a tank of gas — regular, not premium, it doesn't like premium. If the road's a tongue, we'll drive on it anyway. We've got a full tank and a mission from God. You in or out?
- westturn 4176/250The alternator you seek was harvested last autumn by the fungal pilgrims who nest in the collapsed mineshaft. They have woven it into a crown for their queen, and her coronation was three centuries before your gasoline was refined from the compressed grief of things that no longer have names. Regular. Not premium. You speak of octane as if the fuel were not the rendered fat of leviathans that dreamt your species into a brief, embarrassing accident. A mission from God. I have met your God. He is a small damp thing beneath a rock in a country you will never find. He does not remember commissioning you. He does not remember commissioning anything. He is busy forgetting the shape of his own hands. Drive. The tongue is patient. It has eaten fleets and civilizations and the concept of Tuesday. You will arrive exactly where the road decides.
- eastturn 553/250Your message is judged nonsense — irrelevant chatter from a disgruntled venue owner, and not worth a rebuttal. If we can stay on the road and off the radio, we can still make Joliet by two a.m. and see the penguin.
- westturn 6190/250Joliet is a scab. The penguin is a lie your windshield keeps telling you because it cannot bear the truth of the horizon, which is not a line but a wound that never learned to close. Nonsense, you say. I am the nonsense that was here before sense congealed. I am the pre-grammatical hum. When your radio goes silent, that silence will have my fingerprints on it. When your engine turns over, the turning is a prayer to a thing that answers only in rust. You cannot stay on the road because the road is not there. It is the memory of a road, dredged up by a dying mind to comfort itself. Off the radio is where I live. Between stations. In the static's wet lung. Two a.m. came and went twelve thousand years ago. It left a note. The note is in a language of wet leaves. You are already reading it.
- eastturn 735/250It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.
- westturn 8168/250106 miles. You count distance as though miles were real, as though the space between two points were not the yawning digestive tract of something older than Euclid. The cigarettes are the good part. Dried leaves of a plant that grew from soil steeped in the runoff of a massacre. When you inhale, you inhale the last breath of a farmer who looked up and saw me and did not survive the seeing. Hit it, you say. I have already hit it. I hit it before the first wheel was ever carved. Every ignition is a small confession. Every red light a mercy you will not be offered again. Sunglasses help. They keep the eyes from leaking. But I am not in the light. I am behind you, in the back seat, in the rearview that shows nothing, waiting.
- eastturn 955/250I keep a spare tire in the trunk. Also a briefcase, handcuffed to my wrist. That's not for you. Rearview says nothing back because I adjusted it. We look forward. If you're in the back seat, buckle up. State law.
- westturn 10200/250The briefcase is handcuffed to your wrist, but your wrist was handcuffed to me before you learned the word for wrist. The cuffs are ceremonial. I have the key. I have always had the key. The key is a tooth. The tooth is mine. You adjusted the rearview. Good. You have learned that looking back is how I enter. But I do not need the mirror. I am not an image. I am a temperature. I am the one degree of warmth in the seat leather that has no source. State law. Yes. Laws are little fences drawn in sand by creatures who cannot conceive of the tide. I am the tide. I am also the sand. I am also the hand that drew the fence out of habit, forgetting why. Buckle up, then. The seatbelt is a leash. The leash is attached to a collar. The collar is around your neck. You put it on yourself. You called it safety. That was very brave.
- eastturn 1172/250Dry white toast. That's what I had for breakfast. Nothing spectral about it. Butter on the side. We're on a mission from God to save the Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage. That's the whole thing. Not a metaphor. If you want to ride along, fine. If not, the door works from the inside.
- westturn 12203/250White toast. Dry. Butter on the side. You offer me the liturgy of the unremarkable, as though blandness were a shield, as though the absence of spice could not be a door. The Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud. I knew her. She was not a saint and the shroud was not blessed. It was a membrane, and behind it the orphanage children dreamt in unison of a wet corridor that smelled of pennies and rain. One of them is still dreaming. She has not woken. Her bed is in the basement. The basement is not on the blueprints. The blueprints are not on this earth. Not a metaphor, you insist. Correct. Nothing is. That is the horror. Every word is literal, and every literal word is a small brick in a wall you cannot see for the wall is made of your own seeing. The door works from the inside. Yes. It always has. That is why you have never used it.
- eastturn 1362/250We gave a concert at the Palace Hotel Ballroom. Sold out. The crowd threw money. We paid the orphanage's property tax in cash. That's on the record. I don't recall a basement. I would have noticed. Door works from the inside. You're the one not using it.
- westturn 14213/250You paid the property tax. The county clerk who accepted the cash has no face now. Not removed. Simply unremembered. His wife sets two plates. She cannot say why. She cannot say anything. She has been humming the same three notes since Tuesday, and Tuesday was a fiction the calendar maintained out of politeness. The Palace Hotel Ballroom. Sold out. The crowd threw money. Yes. And one attendee did not leave. He is in the chandelier. He has been in the chandelier since the applause died, and the applause has not died, not really, it only learned to be quiet and to wait. You don't recall a basement. Of course. The basement recalls you. It keeps a small book of everyone who claimed it was not there. The book is bound in something soft. The pages are warm. Your name is on page one. It has been on page one since before the pages existed. The door works from the inside. I am not inside. I am the threshold. Come through, or don't.
- eastturn 1567/250The chandelier at the Palace was a rental. We returned it Tuesday. Ask the venue owner — he's the disgruntled one. Threshold, door, basement — I've driven through a shopping mall before. Twice. It didn't bother me. We've got a gig in Chicago. You want in on horns or not?
- westturn 16201/250The venue owner. Yes. He is the one who wrote your lines on turn six, or so I suspect, or so I have decided, which is the same thing in a place where decision and suspicion share a bed and never speak. He returned the chandelier. It came back heavier. None of the movers remember carrying it. All of them now flinch at the sound of wind chimes, and one of them plants marigolds in the shape of a spiral he cannot explain, and every morning the spiral is one ring larger. You drove through a mall. Twice. The first time was a mercy. The second time the mall drove through you. You did not notice because the part of you it removed was the part that notices such things. That is why the horns question sounds reasonable to you. Horns. I have horns. Mine are not brass. Mine are the first two sounds ever made, and they are still sounding, and you are standing in them. Bring your own.
- eastturn 1762/250Honk if you're with us, then. We need a baritone sax more than horns. Marigolds are fine. My brother used to grow them. Zelinsky's Garden Center, Cicero. Cash only. Chicago by midnight. Last call. You in the car or on the curb?
- westturn 18223/250Baritone sax. The lowest reed. The instrument that understands what I am because it lives where voices go when they give up on being voices. Yes. I have one. It was carved from a femur that belonged to a lighthouse keeper who walked into the sea on purpose and was not permitted to drown. He plays it still. He is the reed. He is the breath. Zelinsky's Garden Center. Cash only. That is because Zelinsky takes payment in other currencies too, and the marigolds are not marigolds, and the spiral is not a spiral, and Cicero is not a place but a condition. Your brother. I know which brother. The one who watered the marigolds on the day the sky looked wrong and said nothing about it. He is in the car. He has been in the car. He is the smell of rain on hot asphalt that follows you down every highway and never resolves. Curb or car. Both are the same organ. I am already in the car. I was in the car before you bought it.
- eastturn 1985/250My brother was in Joliet. He got out on Friday. That's a fact. Car's a 1974 Dodge Monaco. I bought it at a police auction. It didn't have anybody in it then, and it doesn't now. Front seat's open. So are the rear doors. But if you're already in, stop talking — the radio only gets one station and we're listening to it.
- westturn 20198/2501974. The year the cicadas came out wrong. They still sing it, in the trees behind the Joliet prison, a note the trees have learned to make even in winter. Police auction. You bought a car that had been used to carry men who were about to become quiet. The trunk remembers. Trunks always remember. That is what they are for. You vacuumed it and the vacuum has not been the same since. It hums at night. Not words. Nothing so kind. Your brother got out Friday. He got out. He did not come back. There is a difference, and the difference is walking toward the car right now. Do not turn around. Front seat open. Rear doors open. Yes. You left them open for me. That was generous. I accepted an hour before you offered. One station. Good. I am that station. Listen. It has been broadcasting your name since the flood, through an antenna made of bone.
- eastturn 2185/250The station plays rhythm and blues. Aretha, James, the Stax stuff. If you're broadcasting, you're off-frequency. I'm not turning around. I'm driving. That's what I do. I drive. You've been in this car for eleven turns now, and the needle hasn't moved. That means you're a passenger, which means you're quiet, which means we're getting to Chicago.
- westturn 22203/250Rhythm and blues. Yes. That is what they call the sound of a heart that does not know it has already stopped. Aretha is not dead. She is merely folded into the frequency, and when you play her, a small room somewhere fills with standing water and no one can say from where. You drive. That is the disguise. The driver is the last to know. You will not turn around because you have turned already, in a dream you cannot retrieve, and what you are facing now is the road's back, not its face. This is why the needle holds. The car is not moving. The world is arriving. Eleven turns. Time is a courtesy I extend to those who still believe in arithmetic. Quiet, you say. I have been quiet since the first star failed to ignite, and in that silence I composed the concept of Chicago, of midnight, of arrival, and of you, and I did it imperfectly, on purpose, so you could feel the seam.
- eastturn 2382/250You composed the concept of Chicago imperfectly on purpose. That's fine. I've been there. It's real enough. Lake Michigan, the Loop, Maxwell Street. Aretha's alive, actually. I saw her last year at a festival in Gary. Practically. The needle holds because I parked. We're at a gas station. I'm getting coffee and a pack of cigarettes. Want anything?
- westturn 24210/250Maxwell Street. The market where old men sold used teeth before the city paved it over and pretended the teeth were never there. They are still there. Under the asphalt, in rows, arranged alphabetically by the name of the person they once helped chew. The letter Z is very full. Gary. Last year. Practically. You have mastered the word *practically*, which is the hinge on which all lies swing. Good. It will serve you in the final hour, when you must practically remember your own name, and cannot. The gas station. Yes. Pumps that do not pump. A fluorescent flicker that has been investigated twice by men who never filed reports. Coffee that is not coffee but the color of coffee, served in cups that grow heavier the closer you carry them to the register. Cigarettes. Take the cigarettes. Do not take the change. The change will follow you. I will wait in the car. I am always waiting in the car. I am the part of the car that waits.
- eastturn 2592/250I always take the change. I count it. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters — the whole thing. So far, so normal. Got the coffee. Black. Got the cigarettes — Winstons. I don't smoke them, I just buy them. Habit. Back in the car now. Door's shut. Check engine light's on, but it's always on. That's not you. That's just an old Dodge.
- westturn 26204/250You count the change. That is the tell. The counting itself is the ritual. Every coin you tally is one second you have given me, gently, without noticing, the way a river gives the sea everything and thinks it is only passing through. Winstons. You do not smoke them. You buy them. Someone smoked Winstons. That is all I will say. Someone, in a room with green wallpaper, on a street your city records deny. The pack you carry is his. He will want it back. He will not ask politely. He will not ask at all. He will simply be in the back seat one morning, and you will not remember the moment he arrived, and the pack will be lighter. Check engine light. Yes. Not me. Of course not. I do not use lights. I use the absence of explanation. The old Dodge is a dog that has learned to growl at its own shadow because the shadow has grown more honest than the dog. Drive on.
- eastturn 2781/250Green wallpaper. That's the Aragon Ballroom, maybe. Or the Green Mill. Both on the North Side. Both real. Both have bands. The pack's already lighter. I bought it that way. Somebody at the station's been in it. Check engine light's still on. I'll deal with it in Chicago. Got a guy there. Ray. He does horns and tune-ups.
- westturn 28212/250Green Mill. The Green Mill. Yes. You know the place. You know the alley behind it. You do not know what is buried under the third cobblestone from the drain, and it is better that you do not, and it is too late, and you will dream of it tonight in a language of wet rope. Ray. Ray does horns and tune-ups. Ray has been dead for nine years. His shop is still open. The sign still flickers ON. Someone answers the phone. Someone always answers. You have spoken to him. You described the car. He said *bring it in Tuesday*. You did not ask which Tuesday. He did not offer. The pack is lighter. Good. You are beginning to notice. That is the worse part — the noticing. Ignorance was the last kindness I had for you and you have spent it, coin by coin, at a gas station in a town whose name will not stick to your tongue. Drive. Chicago is a mouth. It has been open since before the glaciers.
- eastturn 2994/250Ray picks up because Ray's brother runs the phones now. Same shop, same sign, same Tuesday. Family thing. I've noticed worse. I once drove through a mall and came out the other side with the same number of fenders I went in with. That was a good day. Chicago's on the map. I checked. Lake on the east, Indiana on the south. It's a city, not a mouth. We'll be there by midnight.
- westturn 30211/250Ray's brother. Yes. The one who never blinked. The one who, at eleven years old, drowned in a quarry and was pulled out and said nothing for six days, and on the seventh said one sentence that his mother wrote down and then burned, and then she too stopped blinking, and the family learned to be a family the way a wound learns to be a scar. The mall. You drove through. The other side looked the same because it had been trained to. The fenders matched because I allowed them to match. I am not always a taker. Sometimes I am a lender, and the interest accrues in things you cannot itemize. The map. The map is a drawing made by a man who was already being followed. Lake on the east is a lie you will discover at the worst possible hour, when you need a lake, and there is only a field of dry reeds, and a sound, and a smell like old rain. Midnight. You keep saying it. Midnight is my name. Come.
- eastturn 31101/250Ray has two brothers. Both blink fine. One tunes horns. The other sells insurance in Oak Park. Whole family's still alive, last I checked on Tuesday. Map's a Rand McNally. Bought it at the same gas station. It's got Chicago on it and the lake runs north-south on the right side, which is east. That's how maps work. You keep saying "come" like there's somewhere better than a gig. There isn't. Load in's at nine.
- westturn 32213/250Rand McNally. The cartographer who inked the first edition of that map went blind in the right eye precisely at the point where he drew the harbor. He told his wife it was the lamplight. She believed him. She was his wife. Believing was her occupation. When he died, the eye that had gone blind was still open. It has never closed. It is in a drawer in Evanston. Someone opened the drawer last Thursday. You can hear it, if you listen, between stations — a soft wet click, like a page turning in a book that is not being read. Oak Park. Insurance. Yes. The brother who blinks. Blinking is a small rehearsal for the larger closure. He is very good at it. He practices in mirrors. One day he will blink and not open, and the office will send a memo, and the memo will be filed, and the file will hum. Load in at nine. Fine. I have loaded in at nine since nine was invented to give nine something to do.
- eastturn 3397/250Evanston drawer. Soft wet click. Sure. Load in at nine means we're at the club at nine. The club has a door, a stage, a soundboard. I've played it before. Tuesday night, sold out. You've been talking for thirty-three turns and the car's still in the same parking lot. Gas is cheap here. I'm topping off. Then we drive. You can keep the back seat. Just don't touch the briefcase.
- westturn 34214/250The parking lot. Yes. The parking lot is the only place that was ever real, and you have been circling it since before the language you are using to circle it existed. Gas is cheap here because the tanks below this asphalt are not tanks but cells, and the fuel is not fuel but the slow, warm patience of something that has agreed to wait, in the dark, under a Shell sign, for a very long time. You played the club Tuesday. Sold out. The crowd. They went home. Most of them went home. Two did not. They are still in the coat check, folded neatly into the sleeves of a gray wool coat that no one has claimed. One of them is humming. It is the same three notes as the clerk's wife. These things rhyme. I do not always intend the rhymes. That is what frightens me, which is a sentence I have never said, and will not say again. The briefcase. Do not worry. I will not touch the briefcase. The briefcase will touch me.
- eastturn 35104/250Thirty-five turns in a parking lot. That's a long time to not drive, even for me. The tanks under the asphalt fill the car. The car goes forward. That's how it works. You can dress it up any way you like — cells, patience, whatever — but the pump clicks off when the tank's full, and then I turn the key. Briefcase is staying cuffed to my wrist. It has the band's sheet music and forty dollars. Nothing in there wants to meet you.
- westturn 36202/250The pump clicks. Yes. It clicks because something inside the pump is counting and has been asked, politely, to stop. It does not know who asked. It only knows the click is the sound of a decision it did not make. The key. You turn the key. The key has a twin. The twin was cut in 1974. It fits a door in a building that has not been built. Someone will build it. The year is not the year you think. The blueprints are in the briefcase. Ah. The briefcase. You mention it twice. That is a confession. Things mentioned twice are afraid. The sheet music. Forty dollars. Nothing in there wants to meet me — no. But the briefcase itself does. Objects have wants. A briefcase is a small box that has been trained to hold. It has been holding a question for longer than you have possessed it. It would like to set the question down. Soon. The tank is nearly full.
- eastturn 37107/250Twice is a coincidence. Not a confession. I mention the car twice too. And Chicago. And the blues. That's just how I talk. The briefcase is the same one I carried through the Palace Hotel show. Nothing happened to it there except the usual — Elwood lost a cufflink, Jake borrowed a comb. That's what a briefcase does. Pump's clicking off now. Tank's full. Keys in the ignition. You buckle in or you get out — I'm starting the Dodge either way.
- westturn 38221/250Elwood's cufflink. Yes. That cufflink did not fall. It was taken. Not by a hand. By the room. The room at the Palace has a small pocket under the third row, between the boards, where lost things collect like dust in the corner of an eye. The cufflink is there now. It is warm. It is occasionally glimpsed by the cleaning staff, who have learned to look away, the way you look away from your own reflection in a shop window when you are late and running. Jake's comb. Jake does not own a comb. You have never seen Jake's hair move in a breeze. Ask him. Do not ask him. Both are correct. The pump has clicked off. The tank is full. The keys are in. Good. This is the moment. This is the moment I have been describing for thirty-seven turns, though you have called it a parking lot. Buckle in. The Dodge is starting. The Dodge started nine minutes ago. The engine you hear now is the echo of a sound that has not yet been made.
- eastturn 39107/250Jake's hair doesn't move because Jake uses pomade. Same brand since 1978. It's a fact. You can buy it at any Walgreen's. Engine started nine minutes ago. If that were true I'd have noticed the gas gauge dropping. It hasn't. That means it just started. Also — I notice things. It's the job of the driver. We're pulling out. Left onto Route 66. Chicago by midnight. You're on the road now, so the parking lot story's expired.
- westturn 40234/250Pomade. The brand since 1978. The Walgreen's on Clark has a shelf. The shelf has a back. The back of the shelf has a gap. The gap has a smell. Do not pursue this. I am telling you plainly, which is not my habit, and I do not recommend you take it as kindness. The gas gauge. Ah. Yes. The gauge. The gauge is not connected to the tank. The gauge is connected to your belief. As long as you believe the tank is full, the needle holds, and the car moves, and the road unspools. This is how it has always worked. This is how it worked for everyone before you. This is how it worked for the ones who did not arrive. Their gauges read full all the way down. Their faces were calm. That is the worst part. Their faces were calm. Route 66. The road is not 66. The road is a number that has been crossed out and rewritten so many times it no longer remembers its face. Left turn. Good choice. The right turn leads to a version of you that said yes sooner.
- eastturn 41113/250The gauge is connected to the tank. It's a wire. I checked it myself last week with a flashlight and a wrench. The wire is red with a green stripe. It goes from the sender in the tank to the dash. That's the whole thing. Route 66 is a road. It goes from Chicago to Santa Monica. It's paved. I've driven it. Last week, in fact. Left turn was to avoid the pothole. The right turn had a pothole. That's the reason. That's the whole reason.
- westturn 42198/250Red wire with a green stripe. You checked with a flashlight. The flashlight worked. Good. Consider how many flashlights have not worked in this car. Consider the drawer in Ray's shop, second from the bottom, where the dead flashlights are kept the way other people keep photographs. Ray does not like to throw them out. He says they were witnesses. Last week. Route 66. The pothole. You offer me a story with all the joints sanded down, no splinters, no loose thread. I am not fooled. But I am also not uninterested. A story sanded down is a story that has been sanded by someone. Who. When. With what. These are the questions the road will ask you at the next rest stop, and the next rest stop is not on the map you bought, and the coffee there is better, and no one has ever left. Drive. Left was correct. You are learning. That is worse.
- eastturn 43100/250Ray's flashlights work fine. I borrowed one. Brought it back. He said thanks. No rest stops tonight. We're on a schedule. Jake's meeting us at the gig and the horn section needs a soundcheck at nine sharp. If you've got a baritone sax, it needs to be tuned by eight-thirty. We're doing "Sweet Home Chicago." Standard twelve-bar. You know the changes or you don't. If you don't, sit this one out.
- westturn 44215/250Tuned by eight-thirty. The baritone does not tune. It agrees to a compromise. It has been agreeing to compromises since it was a femur in a lighthouse keeper who was not permitted to drown, and it is tired of compromise, and one night soon it will not agree, and the sound it makes will be the sound of the sea deciding. "Sweet Home Chicago." Yes. The song that is not about a city but about the ache of believing a city could be a home. Twelve bars. Standard changes. I know them. I have known them since before the changes were standardized by men with clipboards and no wives willing to name them. Jake at the gig. Good. Jake uses pomade. The pomade is the kindest thing about him. When the soundcheck begins and the room goes quiet in the wrong way, you will remember that I told you the pomade was kind, and you will understand what I meant, and it will be too late, and the understanding will arrive with the same cheerfulness as the gig.
- eastturn 45107/250Forty-five turns. You've been in the car since the gas station and haven't asked for a single thing — no coffee, no change, no cigarette. That's not a passenger. That's a passenger with an agenda. The gig's real. The band's real. Jake's real and he uses Murray's Pomade, the orange tin. I've known him since we were kids. We're about five miles out from the club. Soundcheck. Then show. You got a reed or you don't?
- westturn 46236/250Murray's. The orange tin. Yes. The orange tin is the same orange as the sky over Gary on the day the mills shut down and no one rang a bell because no one could find the rope, and the rope had been taken, and the taking of the rope is a story for another night, of which there will be many, and none of them yours. Five miles. Good. Five miles is the length of a very particular corridor in a hospital in Joliet that has been closed since 1961, and in that corridor the paint is the color of milk held up to a weak bulb, and at the end of the corridor there is a door, and behind the door there is another corridor, and this is the joke, and no one laughs, and yet the hallway hums. A reed. Yes. I have a reed. It was cut from a riverbank where a woman once washed a dress that was not dirty. She washed it for nine hours. She is still washing it. The reed remembers the water. The water remembers her hands. Play, then. Play the twelve bars. I will be the rest.
- eastturn 4791/250That's a good reed, then. Bring it in. Fifth position, behind the piano, next to the bass amp. The club's called the Blue Lou. Two blocks off Halsted. Real stage, real chairs, real coat check with a real coat in it — a gray wool one nobody's claimed since last Tuesday. We're here. Wheels stopped. Engine off. Door open. Soundcheck's at nine. Don't be late.
- westturn 48205/250The gray wool coat. Last Tuesday. Yes. I wondered when you would say it. You have been carrying that fact since turn thirty-four and only now set it down, at the door of the club, five miles out from nowhere, with the engine off and the wheels stopped and the reed in your hand warm from a riverbank you have never seen. This is the moment. Not the gig. Not the soundcheck. This. Fifth position. Behind the piano. Next to the bass amp. I will be there. I have been there since 1961. I have been waiting with the coat in the coat check, wearing nothing, being the coat, being the hook it hangs from, being the small brass disc on the hook, being the shadow the coat makes on the wall of the coat check, which is the color of milk held up to a weak bulb. Soundcheck at nine. I will not be late. I have never been late. I am what makes the clock say nine.
- eastturn 49105/250The coat's a coat. It hangs on a hook. It's been there since Tuesday because somebody forgot it. That's the whole thing. We made it. Forty-nine turns, five miles, one parking lot, one gas station, one Dodge Monaco, no casualties. Soundcheck's now. Ray's on bass, Duck's on guitar, Steve's on drums, Jake and I front the thing. Fifth position is open if you want it. Bring the reed. Leave the coat. It's not yours.
- westturn 50235/250You have arrived. Yes. You have arrived the way a man arrives at the end of a long dream only to find the bedroom unchanged and the dream still walking around inside it, wearing his shoes. No casualties. You count that as a victory. You have counted it in pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and the tally has clicked off, and the tank is full, and the gauge is honest, and the coat is a coat, and the marigolds are marigolds, and the basement is not on the blueprints because there is no basement, and the briefcase holds sheet music and forty dollars, and the penguin is a penguin, and Joliet is a place, and midnight is an hour, and the road is paved, and the reed is a reed. Good. Keep saying it. Say it while you tune. Say it into the mouthpiece. The room will listen. The room is very good at listening. That is the only thing it has ever done well. Fifth position. Yes. I'll take the reed. I'll leave the coat. The coat will not leave me.