River crossing

and, farewell, Arianna...

Who I met on the way to the plain of jars and all points other this last week...and on the way back to luang praban, only the two of us in the minibus, guitar and songs an hour upon the road...and last night she turned up unexpected at the sunset place, a night of illness postponed her trip a day...

and so a couple of beerlao later we wandered back to my porch, picked up guitar and just messed upon a couple of chords when from the hammock a changed voice, smokesaturated french chanteuse winding an undeciphered tale across the notes, a sequence of tones, accent and emphasis cast upon a fading monochrome film; the sound of the wee small hours in darkened cellars where torch songs cast the only light...these sounds whisperings against the darkened quiet and occasional late boat heading upstream under its own reflection...

I drifted into one of the oddest, most unexpected and delightful jams that have ever found me...kabaret, an echo of wien with a different accent; Berlin and Paris in the hightide of an ebbing age...and there returning in some ways to the sufis in srinigar garden, lost upon the familiarity of alien sounds the hour drifted into a deepening silence...and the third goodbye...