Ah that lag leading to cutting zeds, Max. Brian, my friend you've met in Newstead, used to speak of afternoon naps not as snatching 40 winks but as as 'cutting zeds'. Whether or not lag leads to over-snoring, I don't know.
I like 'perish any patriotism'. The familiar has such a pull, especially the early years familiar. And it's nothing to do with comparing countries and/or pride.
Bill
> On 23 Oct 2014, at 1:52 am, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Jet Lag and Z
>
> When I first quit my home town,
> home country, for ‘overseas’ -
> thrilled, I took the plane -
> no-one warned me about jet lag.
>
> The previous year they’d gone by sea,
> departing friends - it was the great
> transition, ’63,
> from voyage to flight -
>
> I’d envied their going (even
> the fabled sea-sickness),
> their slow weeks afloat,
> Equator jollifications,
>
> long books, the mystique
> of canals, Suez or Panama -
> the ‘northern hemisphere’,
> powerful idea.
>
> I flew in to cold Heathrow,
> coped with bulging luggage
> on the Tube to South Ken's
> unfriendliest concierge,
>
> took a walk to Hyde Park
> glancing at monuments -
> soaring? - overbearing;
> collapsing on the grass,
>
> tremulous, delirious.
> Jet-lagged, though I didn’t
> know it, body clock
> totally out of whack.
>
> I’d bought my first
> London paper - turning
> its pages, I learned
> what power over the new
>
> New Zealand expatriate
> had the letter Z (zed not zee).
> The wandering eye’s fate
> is to be drawn magnetically
>
> to any and every Z
> on any printed page.
> They leaped to view
> as if to show
>
> home was not out of touch,
> remote but not too much.
> Thus I focused disappointed
> for mere moments on Zoo, Zone,
>
> Zanzibar, Zambia,
> anything that zigzagged.
> This survived being jet-lagged,
> stronger than the national flag.
>
> What is my nation? -
> perish any patriotism.
> This is primal - like the outline
> on maps of those two islands
>
> pored over in primary school,
> traced and internalized.
> To this day, especially
> when travelling, dislocated,
>
> decentred, deracinated,
> I jump to attention
> fixated on what in my need
> reaches out to the letter Z.
>
>
> Max in Seattle, October 2014
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