memorial landscape with coffee

for mikie

these last days, moonless skied, time has been an unaccountable companion...days merging again into themselves...one conversation about what day it was...all electronica said friday but that made no sense at all...and so today became a sadly startling one, a hard anniversary, unexpected but known, misplaced upon the ragged clock...and the there was the desire, and possibility to head upstream to muang ngoi kao an hours journey up river from nong khiaw, the place of the mythical boat...and our boat appeared on time, although remained static for the next half hour until eventually we set off upriver, through a bewitching landscape of peaks rising through jungle, cliffs of naked stone and scattered settlements.
And as we drifted into landing, a landscape of mists breaking, offering glimpses of slopes until hills defined themselves in the clarity of the afternoon sun.

It's a glorious place, I see echoes shaped in assynt and others written a over a thousand years ago in a Chinese script.

It's the kind of landscape he would have loved, and the coffee is lovely...and so as sunset approached behind the peaks this confusion of days, dates and direction became that perfect quiet place to spend this day of memories...and to offer gratitude...some distance traversed, others follow.

And as a late boat sounds the river, flickering light against the dark, I think of others: we remember in sorrow and joy his song, our parts in the cacophony; and tonight we dream him once more in his silence...

and 1100 blips...and counting...