Jambalaya

I'd just gotten off the evening train and was gingering my way along the snow-covered platform out here in the boonies of the most different country in the world - the nation of sushi, sashimi, ramen, gagaku, minyo, enka and various other food and musical forms - when into my ears from out of my iPod (filled for me by brother Mick, back in Santa Barbara) came the time-tripping voice of country-and-western deity songwriter Hank Williams, singing Jambalaya, crawfish pie and-a fillet gumbo...

What a chronic surprise it was to suddenly be so far away from then and there! The peerless tune and lyrics evoked their own jambalaya of memories -- that lakeside cabin in upstate New York way back in the early '50s, where the grownups played Hank Williams all the summer days long on the phonograph... and those shimmering highways winding along the red earth of the south, the ancient trees draped with Spanish moss fading into distances ahead... images immediate yet so remote here in the cold and dark on the other side of world and time-- what a psychodistance I traveled in those moments, living back along life while making my way toward the stairs to the foot of the mountain...