But now you’re in the land of zee, & have to see just why you can see, Max.
The lag being heavier now, too?
Doug
On Oct 22, 2014, at 8:52 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
Douglas Barbour
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Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
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