9246. THE BREAKING LIGHTS OF KILGARRY

9246. THE BREAKING LIGHTS OF KILGARRY CENTER ON THE EDGE OF FAIRFIELD PORTER FIELD:

Have you ever walked out onto a stage with all the lights on and the audience at the ready and the stage directions marked with tape and everything set to go and what you THOUGHT was a script turned out to be nothing more than a newspaper article about rodents and survival in underground tunnels and the only thing you saw when you looked out at the audience were some flashlights or illumines shining back towards you and you couldn't for the life of you figure out WHY or WHAT they were but you surmised that behind each flashlight was some form of a human (you hoped anyway) head with some ideas of meaning and expectation - and whatever it was they were expecting to see you knew damn well that YOU weren't about to be the one to deliver it?

Have you ever taken the moment extra - when you have it - to dwell on the idea of experience and what you're supposed to learn from it - as if every bit of living was some lesson you were supposed to absorb and be able to pass on to others? Whew, I guess I did.

Like just today - between watching portraits of crass politicians talking back to reporters about torture and youth and the places they play and talking-head types playing fuzzy-ball tennis with their lackluster mouths and the scansion of their hands held open with the broken piano-keys of an abbreviated concert career - I swore I heard someone talking about a person who had 'choked to death on a Lifesaver.' And, of course, being the sort of person I am, that phrase in and of itself so paradoxical led me immediately into a long rant about the philosophical quandaries presented and the depths of the paradox itself and the story line in general dwelt upon the differential of the dichotomy between life and death amidst the pomp and circumstance of 'choking to DEATH on a Lifesaver' : and then I noticed HOLY SHIT! the audience out in front of me was laughing uproariously and I could do nothing to stop it from doing so and the flashing lights had all disappeared (even though they were NOT flashing they were called 'flashlights' so they must have, at some level, possessed the quality of a flash for someone so what the hell...) and I figured MAYBE just maybe if I keep talking and scouring the ceiling with one-liners and double-entendres I could maybe stop a war this war that war or any other war of my choosing - even though there wasn't a war really and it was all just a pretension to keep a cover while people randomly died or died by choice (another strange paradox I suppose) and anyway what really mattered was that the patterned element of behavior be kept in check and local - so that NO new weirdnesses were allowed to break out and alter the argument - and then someone really DID ask me what sort of math courses I had back in seminary school and I answered as to how they didn't really offer any they didn't do much about math and they asked WHY NOT? and I said 'well they were too busy trying to convince us that three was really one OR they were probably afraid that some jerk like me would go up to the board and turn to the class with the problem and ask : 'Now! how many times does 1 priest go into 5 young boys?' - and, oh yeah, the audience is STILL laughing on that one.

Yes, there are some things that keep one from practicing : I can remember my very own times staring out windows and hating the next half-hour of time supposedly piano time practice time silent I hated but went on nonetheless and up above my head was a green skylight along the atrium where this piano was  -  a seminary practice room a corridor an alley way  -  and the heat would build up as magnified some by the lass of the skylight and in that still room I could sweat an I swore I could watch the varnish of shellac (realizing I didn't even know the difference anyway) almost bubble up in the heat on the practiced wood of the piano top and then later in the cold when it dried it dried in little patterns like bricks both hard and bumpy and I liked that for the texture it made the texture gave the music something and they each somehow reflected each other and yeah yeah as a twelve or thirteen year old those sorts of things were important to me  -  the odd and the oblique  -  bu o one seemed to care and I never spoke of this stuff with anyone at all : knowing my world was sorry and instant and quiet and still while all the rest made their noises.