Listen to Jim’s podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/
or read his story below:
BONGO MAN DISRUPTS DUM DUM DEARTH QUEST
The idling motor of the muscle car is rhythmic and sputtery. All the windows of the car are down, so that passersby can hear what goes on inside, so that the driver can hear what’s happening all around.
His baseball cap reversed, the driver is leaning over the steering column. His fingers and palms are beating out complex tempos upon the wheel, as if it has suddenly become a set of bongos.
He stares straight ahead at nothing. He is lost within a labyrinth of chuckling carburetor, puffy leaping hands, dipping chin, unheard lyrics, imagined tunes, recalled memories, imagined symbols and meanings.
I walk past the crookedly parked vehicle, not daring to interrupt the flow, the flows, of this bongo dream-man. I am my own reverie, he is his own reverie, and the two of us are just comets passing and bypassing one another, each with our own celestial small wisdoms, each with our solitudes enforced.
Does the bongo man know that my only quest this humid morning is for a supply of Dum Dums to re-fill the take-one-free basket at the bookshop? Dum Dums are not always readily available, so I’m making several stops in my trek. Do I know what back-story drives the idling-motor bongo man to perform his audienceless concerto? Does the bongo man know about Dum Dums and old bookstores and tiny insignificant quests such as mine?
Is each of us equally significant in the schemelessness of things? Do we count?
He counts his beats, I count my Dum Dum blessings, the sad and scruffy parking lot spreads heavy and forlorn beneath us.
And our universes part ways unheralded by time and space and journey
© Jim Reed 2017 A.D.