*Dirty Word Alert*

I read poetry on the plane which was a first. I read Leonard Cohen’s, "Energy Of Slaves", or bits of it is more accurate. Because it’s the kind of book you have to put down. The words are so powerfully evocative you have to set the thing down and think about what you just read, at least I do. It’s my plane version of turning off the lights and lying down on the couch, I guess. Because I would read a page or two, then set the book in the seat pocket and close my eyes.

And it was not just the words, but the astrology. Many of the poems in that book were written when Uranus and Pluto were conjunct… the late 60’s this is. So the book is like a time capsule on that level. Uranus and Pluto conjunct marked the sexual revolution among other things. And I don’t know about you. But when someone says their music is not merely naked, but open-legged, like a cunt, which Cohen does in this book… well I just have to stop right there, put the book down and think about what I just read. Because, I mean come on. Reading that is like running head on into a train.

And this is one heck of way (recommended) to fly across a country. Because the seat back in front of you is boring and this other is just so consuming.

And in contrast, I was sitting next to a Navy man. He’d just graduated boot camp and was scheduled to leave for Italy on Valentine’s Day. And he was so young. Too young for my book, I thought. He was pimpled.

And I thought it ironic he was leaving Colorado for Italy, sitting next to an Italian woman on what would be his last domestic flight for three years, and I told him so. “I’m here so you can get used to people who look like me,” I said. I noticed a boot drawn on his hand in pen and I am so stupid…

I am so stupid I thought it must have to do with boot camp. You know. Some kind of ritual. They get out of boot camp and draw a boot? Who knows. This stuff is foriegn to me and it was only several days later I realized it was Italy that he’d drawn on his hand. Hah!

But anyway, the Navy man was not alive when Leonard Cohen wrote his brave, dirty poems and sitting on the plane thinking this, Snoopy smiled.

Do you read when you fly? If so, do you have a preference, what?

Skip to May.. The Soldier and P at the Laundromat