This weekend I saw six shows by the most fun, talented, sophisticated, versatile, energetic and moving musician in the world, the one and only Uehara Hiromi.

I met new people at each show, went to one show with a friend, walked through Central Park and Strawberry Fields with friends who are moving to the city next month, saw and surprised one of my best friends since kindergarten on the subway after one of the shows, was seen and surprised by three of my students in Washington Square Park after the show the next night, and witnessed many happy people wearing rainbows on the train home last night.

I was very tired this morning, but I have to do what I have to do.  We talked about education in the first class.  Your entire life is learning, but even so, I explained public schools and universities.  Usually you study at a university for four years.

Speaking of which, I made it home from my first gigantic journey on this same day, four years ago.

I thought I was finished, but there were many adventures, challenges and treasures waiting for me.

Wow, someone seriously just set off some fireworks...

Happy because of Hiromi shows

Must work now though

Will write in the afternoon

More

            If you want to know where you’re headed, it helps to know where you came from.

            Therefore, if you want to know where I’m taking you, you should probably know where I’ve been.

            The journey I see stretched out before me began on an island at the edge of an enormous ocean of water.  They named it Long Island.   People tell me I was born in a place named Smithtown.  I believe them.  They showed me the piece of paper that says so.  “Smith” is the most common name in America.  It’s not my name, but it showed me that there were already plenty of other people like me who already desired and perhaps even received the treasures of life whose existence I had yet to even believe.  Although my ancestors had been on this land for several hundred years by the time I came around, and the experiences of forests, farmland, meadows and marshes supposedly swam in the arteries of my family’s tree, most of the terrain had been conquered by strip malls and chain restaurants long before I joined the scene.

            Everywhere around there is a land called the “suburbs.”  In other words, I began the journey in a land of reasonably enjoyable and comfortable existence, the style of which has spread around the country and the world, and has been an enormous part of the one poem since the world almost ended itself about seventy years back.  Luckily the world didn’t end itself, and now people live in many types of places.  One of them is for people who want to live close to each other and everything that everyone else has access to, but maybe with a little space to grow your own grass, allow a tree and we to breathe, and sit in your own space without anything affecting your enjoyment of the best world you know.

              The father of my father, that is, one of my two grandfather's, helped build the first suburbs, named Levittown.  After World War II people were feeling good and decided to spend their time making babies, but then they realized they had to raise these babies in a new society, so they started building homes and highways so people could still be connected with mass gatherings of humans (for better or worse) called cities without actually living in them.  Everyone could have their own little space and be safe, without pollution and crime and unknown neighbors.  After all, the world had almost ended, and most of humanity had a place to be with their family.  Even sweeter, you could enjoy the gifts of a green lawn, still plenty of celestial sea spread as bright stars in the sky of your suburb, the mix between city and country, the homes of humanity.  And all the comforting conveniences of cutting edge technology.  Electric refrigerators to keep your food safe so you can keep living and tasting deliciousness, TV’s so you can see the imagination and action of much of humanity, in an easy chair where you can lounge and enjoy performances from all your favorite movie, sports and TV celebrities, dishwashers to keep your eating places clean, and affordable racing places to be that can move you wherever you want to see the variety of ways to be in homes of the brave and lands of the free, with courage, poetry, mystery and artistry.

            American hero, poet and fellow native Long Islander Walt Whitman, the man who sang about the open road, probably wasn’t talking about going on a mystic promenade to the mall such as the one they named after him near his hometown, although mall is defined as a space made available for a public promenade.  I’m sure if the most famous poet in American history were forced to go, he would have made the best of it, tuned into the unseen he knew was there, and recognized our shopping adventure as the “journey work of the stars.”  Especially if we were there to buy his book.  After all, it’s all one poem, and poetry's just one nutrient.  We've gotta eat.  And there are still little leaves of grass on the tiny lawns occupying the small strips separating asphalt parking spaces while we walk through affordable gateways to more places to see.

              Ah, the magical poetry of suburban Long Island.  I can see the rest of the world rolling its eyes, but when I look at this life as a prize, I actually feel blessed to be from there, even though I’m still glad I got out of there.  Relatively speaking, I’m from the very average suburbs.  As I said, one of my grandfather’s grew up there, and he helped build the first suburbs.  Both he and my other grandfather (from way upstate near Canada) fought that big war that almost ended all life everywhere on the magic flying ball.  Then he came home and tried to make a good life for his family while enjoying his life, helping people and having the occasional adventure in nature or on the job.  Between that and the war, he saw a lot of gruesome sights.  But he raised his children well.  Speaking of which, my father didn’t fight in any wars, thankfully.  But he did get out on many adventures in the wild, including working up near the North Pole around the time I was born.  He’s definitely been through his rites of passage as an adult.  I’m not interested in any violent wars either, so I’m making my own rite of passage.  I think that’s what this is supposed to be.  I don’t know exactly where it goes or what it will entail, but that’s what it is.  There’s an enormous real world out there with a lot going on, and you can’t control or change all of it, and you don’t have to control or change any of it.  But you can learn something about what’s inside of you by embracing what’s new.  Then, if you show it, the universe will help you grow it.

            Speaking of growing, after eleven years of growing up in normal average America, my family moved to upstate New York.  We moved to the true country side, north of the New York State capital of Albany, where my dad had just been assigned to work.  We lived in Washington County, named after the man on the most circulated piece of art and paper in the world.  He was the first president of our country, and the leader of the rebel forces in the fight for independence against our parents, my ancestors, the tea-loving peoples of the magical musical language island of England.  Our new home was right next to Vermont and not far from Massachusetts, both of which are in New England.  My country is a young country, but if you want a few hundred years, the wise ways of the Iroquois, and the beginning of European American history, look into the Northeast.  People had been giving thanks for food and friendship for centuries in that extreme country with every season experienced to its utmost degree.

            It was strange adjusting to the country, not being able to see our neighbors and so on, but by the time I was ready to go to college, I definitely felt more like a country boy than a suburbanite.  Any time I think of home, I feel very lucky.

            When I became a young adult I moved to central New York to go to college.  Then I moved to New York City to do my best to be a human who got the most out of life, however unconventional my methods and pathways with stories might seem.  Usually, in my experience, the best treasures and lessons in life are often uncovered in the strangest ways with the best stories.  The more unique, creative and imaginative, the better for everybody.  Love.  Love?  Love... Love!  You have to feel, express, breathe, share, and receive, and if love does find its way to you, you will be prepared to believe.

            When I had arrived in the self-proclaimed capital of the world, I was a young twenty something, fresh out of school, learning to play the fool in the real world with more mysterious rules.  Even when I started in the city, my favorite joys were exploring the world around me, listening to music, reading books, taking photographs, making notes when ideas and observations came to mind, and then occasionally exercising my creativity by writing about whatever stirred those mysterious synapses inside of me.  I continued all three hobbies through my three years in the city, but by the time I was thinking about going on a journey, I had been feeding on wisdom, knowledge, imagination and creativity with an intensity that had never previously been thought possible by me.

            Education had taught me that other smart people had learned that the benefits of human kind came from expressing one's mind.  Whether, artistic, material or intellectual, the greatest steps in all of life serve experience through communication of a vibration in the universal imagination.  That’s the way of creation.  Everything’s tuned in through its own station.  And those communications increase and speed up peace by allowing release of fearful mind disease, because the more you know the more your courage grows and you accept the overall flow of the reality show.

            We began as one life, but somewhere in there we got adventurous and started exploring.  The visible world wide web was still a few hundreds of thousands of years away.  So we became separated by physical boundaries in the landscape: oceans, mountains, deserts, forests, jungles, seas and rivers.  Our history is the story of overcoming those experiential barriers and evolving the potential of universal experience through sharing our expressions of inner truth.  It all starts with movement carrying awareness to higher experiences of quality.  Its arbiters are heroes, which are humans who wake up and move their bodies and minds through time to explore and apply the imagination of the divine.   These heroes are anyone at any time in their lives who are fortunate enough to seize the opportunity life provides to explore its unknown mysteries, though they extend to infinity.  See what you see, be what you’ll be, for being free is up to thee.

             One key to my journey toward feeling free was to go to the New York Public Library and read everything I could read.  Soon after I successfully completed university, I started realizing that my brain was a beautiful key to the mystery, and was here for much more than earning me some numeric test score intended to give some ever fleeting temporary form of happy.  I’d been given the gift of understanding, and seeing connections that many others did not see.  Comparisons of human existence are unnecessary and impossible.  I was, am and will be the same as everybody.  I do what I do to feel alive and make do.  I have always been humbled by the sheer vastness of intelligence beyond my existence and comprehension exemplified by other humans throughout all time, coming from the beauty of a universal mind that couldn’t possibly be only mine.  But whatever was in anyone else was also in me, and I was learning to let it shine.  So I read books.  I read the stories of life.  I absorbed imagination and knowledge.  I filtered whatever I learned through the lens of my reality, to find relevance in my day to day experience.  I coupled that with an intense obsession with the elegant experience of eclectic music, and soon the synchronicity started to show itself in full force.  Everything was adding up, but I didn’t know as to what.  One thing I knew was true after three years referring to NYC as “here” was that I had to face some fear and go places that were far from near.

            The best group of papered trees to inspire me was a book that taught me about the human tradition of the “hero journey,” Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss.  I trusted this man with my soul’s imagination and experiential guidance because he had the reputation among humans as the most knowledgeable and wise in the stories of mankind.  That is to say, he knew his way around humanity’s mythology, its explanations for how to live great lives through metaphors and poetry in ways that bring us the bliss of being personally.  He knew it all, from Hindus to Mayans to the Middle East to Woodstock to Star Wars.  Amongst all those ideas, he said that the most common story is the hero journey: leaving the known for the unknown, either because you’re uncomfortable where you are and want to escape, or because you feel a call to adventure in some foreign world, a place beyond your familiar sphere of experience.  He told me everything to expect, from the tests, to the realizations, to what to do afterward when the journey is over and you return to the world you knew before, which will obviously be different from how you remember it.  You face challenges, read the signs, accept aid from magic helpers, experience low moments right before transformative treasures, and bring those treasures back to society for the greater fun of everyone.

            Even so, you have to do more than just go.  You have to find a way to express this unknown which has become familiar to you through your unique adventure and convince society that it needs this new truth you have learned, because it doesn’t know that it needs what you have to give.  Don’t worry.  This is the story of all advancement.  As much as you might fear the status quo or the decline of human intelligence, there are hearts feeding love to millions and millions of hearts, and they get turned on by innovation, imagination, and, when given the chance to dance, some romance.

            The adventure I’m in took me to New York City for three years.  That in itself was the story of a journey, but after a while I started to realize that New York City, for all it’s worth, is inherently not like the rest of the world because it is only one place.  It may be a mix of everything into tall buildings, but it is still one city in one country.  I decided that if I wanted to have the best life I could, I’d have to love life somewhere beyond that specific city.

            At the beginning of 2009, the ultimate year of my generation’s decade, I became inspired to find a deeper, more diverse and challenging experience of the world than I had previously dared to pursue.  I wanted to connect to the world in a better way, and use the life given to me in the best possible way, every day.  Until then, I had been a pretty privileged middle class American with a few of those favored perks that come from life being good to you amidst all the challenges of surviving and thriving, because that’s what life needs people to do.

           What’s next?

            I don’t know, but by looking at where I’ve been, I might get a good idea that wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t tried to apply my imagination to this real creation tuning in through my particular personal universal station.  The less I try to pin down the future, the more I open myself up to experiences where I will be forced to raise my quality as a human being.  I learn how to adapt and improvise using my mental, emotional and intuitive powers growing inside to figure out the most excellent path through this ride, rolling around this map of life that’s everywhere around us and inside us.  Wherever and whatever you go through, I hope great things happen for you.

            Great.  It’s agreed.  We’re going to have a joyful, creative, and wondrous adventure filled with physical pleasure, mental treasure and mysterious awe beyond measure.  There will be challenges to give you the joy of living life through feats which make your heart beat and your blood flow to your head with your feet so you can grow with life.  Ain’t that sweet?  The world’s love is always and never and everywhere complete.  And there will be both physical and mental pain to make you appear to go just enough insane until you see the gain and move to a higher quality “sane.”  Appreciate your soul/brain, or whichever word makes you happy, and explore yourself, this world, more deeply.

            I see songs, poetry, and landscapes of beauty to free the love inside of me...

Intro

            Hi!

            How are you?

           

            Where are you?

I will tell you.

You’re in a very special place.

Look around you.

Maybe it appears special to you, and maybe it does not.  I don’t know what you call this place you’re in, but I do know where you are.  You’re on a magic flying ball spinning around a brightly shining star.  I imagine you already knew that.  But you might not think about it very much, probably because people aren’t rewarding you with pleasure and love you can see.  Still, it’s true.

            I say this place is special because it’s floating on invisible something, in invisible something, moved by invisible mystery something, all while life goes on with its endless scenes of magic and mystery, passion and history, poetry and science and universal reliance on spaces and times fused by a storyteller who rhymes.

           

            You can find everything you want in this place.  If you are brave enough to explore in the name of being alive more, you may find beauty and trust, and love and lust, and times when choosing is a must.  There is the ecstasy of knowing your only cosmic responsibility is to be.  Yet there is also ultimate joy that can only be received after quality tasks have been achieved.  The time for adventurous fun is different for everyone.  But when the message is received, be ready to believe that this magic spinning flying ball is begging you to live the journey of cosmic poetry.  This voyage will bring you to dignified, electric and chaotic cities filled with glorious splendor and squalid misery.  You will also see peaceful places in the country, where you can perceive the beauty of the leaves and the infinite glory of the stars shining clearly above the trees.  During this journey you do not always have to be right, or feel happy, or even be free, peaceful or genki (which is Japanese for “healthy and happy”).  But as long as you breathe, why not explore more of this mysterious poem you weave?  You just might find you have a few aces you didn’t even know were up your sleeve…

           

            The best U can do is decide what to do with the life that is offered U with each present clue, and go from there to face your bear, whatever U have been given by the living giving.  As our moments come together, we see strong threads of beauty, pathways through poetry, and begin to conduct a symphony composed by the life within oui

           

            The treasured rewards for your participation in creation are enthusiasm, courage through risk for love, and the incredible adventure of being alive.  If you rise to higher levels, you will be lucky enough to win an intuitive trust in a poetic language which moves your world where and when and how this must.  U look through our eyes, bathing our I’s with this beautiful prize.

It’s a glorious and scary world, but there are good people everywhere you go in the universe show.  Suns do shine, and water does flow, and humans do love, and life does grow.

As you know, it usually helps to know more, but sometimes trusting the surprise is best and most wise.  You can do this by loving the world so much that you trust it will help you through the quest by taking care of the rest.  Of course, you must do your best on whatever you have chosen as your test.

           

            Once I went on a quest.  I was very lucky to go on this quest, and even luckier to have survived and thrived.  Thank you, universe.  I imagined all sorts of things that could have happened, but here I am, telling this story to reflect your world’s glory.

           

            In the past four years I have been fortunate to have been able to choose to energize my existence with, embark on, and enjoy a series of journeys, adventures and voyages around many parts of the world, including the land of my birth.

           

            All journeys begin when life begins, and the purpose of a journey is to renew life.  Make it new again.  My journey into this world began in a large building called a hospital.  When I was around long enough to learn and understand some of the world, I was told hospitals were places where everybody, including me, began their destiny in the galaxy.  I was also told that I didn’t want to go back, because that would mean there would be something wrong with me, or even that I would be leaving this only experience I know, which everyone told me is called “life.”  I think even back then the lesson was clear.  Life is a circle.  You’re going to end up where you started, so you might as well fit in as much in between as you can do, and make that circle’s arc as wide and smiley as possible while you’re here, wherever here is compared to there, if there is a there beyond this air.  I know now that “life” is everywhere.  What that word exactly means, well, how could I possibly care?  At some point you have to accept you don’t know and take a dare and face that bear of a question that is always there.  It’s only fair.  Even so, don’t take this “life” for granted, because although it appears to be everywhere, the unique life that you enjoy is extremely rare, so you should definitely care.

           

            There are many ways to show you care.  There is beauty all around you.  Feel free to stare, and if you find something new, please, do share.

           

            The best is to express what’s going on inside, which, though it may be invisible, is very, very, very alive.  If you want that alive to thrive, first you must survive.  Luckily for you, this universe, or “one verse,” provides plenty of poetic clues as to what you can, should and will do.  Help it guide you through by listening, looking, hearing and seeing, and soon you’ll be freeing the excellence of being.

           

            The ball makes circles around this enormous bright light which is actually a ball of fire carrying our soular system wherever it may desire.  I suppose that’s up to the forces on higher, galactic central, the universe, whatever it is that lights the fire of grace in space.  But when it comes to this soular system, it’s the ace, selflessly flowing light, heat, and life to this place.

           

            The ball where I was born and have been this whole time is mostly covered in beautiful blue, but the artist completes this scene with glorious green.

           

            There are many groups of people in places with words called names, and throughout life they have changed.  Right now, the range is from 190-206, depending on who you ask, which is kind of strange.

           

            My land’s name is five words:  The United States of America.  It has nicknames too.  America.  The United States.  The U.S.  The States.  The USA.  The US of A.  The Union.  US.  We’re a club of humans that share many aspects of life.  We have the same people taking our money and telling us what to do, and weapons entrusted to people controlled by the first people, all in service of assuring that many (but not all) members of our club get to enjoy their life as much as possible, that is, as possible as it is for humans to assure how things are amongst these millions of galaxies with gazillions of stars.

           

            There’s a lot of life on this ball, but the ones who have a chance to love it the most are humans, i.e., you and me.  And the people who have the best lives are the ones who find a way to get some pay for doing the work play which they love each day.

            I had only been riding the magic flying ball for five circles around the star when I decided I am a writer, story teller, and creative adventurer with an opportunity to be a unique sensation of the universal imagination.

            It’s beautiful and true that I can make this book to express Chung Fu to you and give you clues about what you’re supposed to do to make do and get through the eternal U, whoever you are or whatever you do.  Even though I’m writing this at a place in time and space that has been laced with some sort of number language date, I might as well be talking to you in person right now, face to face.

            If you were with me right now, let’s say, by a fire alongside a field beneath a row of trees, and the suns were all shining gloriously in the beautiful dark mysterious celestial sea, reflecting the harmony of the cosmic symphony, just for you and me and the infinity of divinity, I would tell a story about a journey that began a long time ago in a distant land of mystery, a place, which, to get there, you must traverse the deserts, mountains, jungles, cities and seas.

            When I am finished, I suggest you go celebrate the universal love poetry which makes you brave, free, awed by the mystery and supremely genki.

            Go be free, on behalf of everybody.

           

            Love what you see, especially the beauty, even when it appears not to be.

           

            Rest assured.  There is providential poetry in everything you see.

           

            Of course, it’s more than a word such as poetry.  This is also about the feeling that vibrates intensely in every part of your be.  My favorite path to this feeling is awe, an intense wondrous energy, such as that special feeling you get when you’re alone in the streets, the forest, the water or the stars, and the wind creates a breeze which happens to be the keys to your joyful destinies, and then you roll with the tide and go inside.  Then the right song comes along to turn you on, and that’s when your love smiles at you to help you pull through and make do that which draws your love closer to you and the deeper experience of this magic you share and breathe with U…

            Naturally, you can’t just fall for every pretty person who sends you a smile or a thumb’s up.  That’s part of the poetry.  That’s why the one who does smile at you in the right way is so special to begin with.  That’s why you need the clearest choices of character which bring you the precise peace that puts your mind at ease so you may live the life you love.  But it doesn’t end there.  Sometimes you need something more than humans can offer, if only to move away just enough to get a newer viewpoint which makes you appreciate and communicate at a higher level.  That’s when you get out there and start noticing the parts of your world you never noticed before.  The ones you took for granted.  It’s all out there for you to pick apart and recreate as art from your own heart.  If you’re having trouble at the start, you can show off your best attempts at being smart simply by playing with your brain, and sharing everything you find, no matter how insane.  But this is a beginning stage, and as you advance with age, you learn that if you want to get anything done or find anything you truly desire with clear focus from the parts of you that matter, then you’re going to have to flow your senses into a system where you can choose the best moves to put your personal poetry into action, playing your role in the one poem journey of everybody, the goal being now, the joy us wow.

Three Superlative Shows!

Wow

Sleepy time now

14

On Thursday morning I woke up after five hours of sleep, a persistent pattern these days.

When I got to work, my first task was to lead a discussion on the role of special interest groups and lobbyists in American politics.  Usually we can turn unpleasant topics into good discussions, but something about the inertia of the political system kept us from getting excited to start the day.

The next class is usually a little more energetic, especially because there's this young kid from Colombia who's really psyched about the World Cup.  He'd hurt his arm the day before, though, so he was very quiet during class.

The third one involved a discussion about reducing crime and the morality of capital punishment.  A light day, indeed.

After that I taught a two hour private class with two older Brazilian women who are on more of the beginner side of the learning spectrum.  They're lovely, but the fourth class of the day moves very slowly.

By the time I get home I am usually in dire need of a nap and some food, since I only have five minute breaks between 9 am and 3 pm.  Even so, it's six straight hours of work, so although expenses remain simple by western developed standards, I don't have to worry so much about money.  I'm like most people when it comes to money: I don't worship it, but I don't like wasting energy worrying about it, which, as I've learned in the past six months, can really take a lot out of you.

At 6:30 I had a new private lesson with an older Spanish woman.  She really loves jazz music and saxophones, and says that any time she hears Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," she has to sit down, wherever she is.

Immediately after that I began the two hour lesson with my advanced group, making it six different classes, ability levels and topics during one day, most of which is spent standing, speaking, listening, correcting and literal thinking on my feet.  It makes me tired, but they say that sitting down too much isn't good for you, so I feel lucky that I have a job that allows me to stand and interact with people.  As much energy as I expend, I draw on the energy of the students too.

I concluded the teaching day by discussing the role of fear in society and how to overcome it.  A man in the textbook had sold his possessions on e-bay and then visited everyone he had sold them to.  Apparently the stories behind the materials were more important than the materials themselves.  Then we talked about the impact of art, a perfect lead-in to my final activity of the day.

Afterward I rode the train to West 3rd street, where I waited in line for a Hiromi show.  The people ahead of me appeared to be foreign tourists.  They looked a little bit out of place at a jazz club.  I'm not sure, but something about their manner of speaking and their clothes gave me that impression.

When they let me inside I was seated at a table behind the piano, just like the first time I saw a Hiromi show!  The previous night I'd sat parallel to the piano, allowing me to see the entire trio and all of Hiromi's contagiously ecstatic expressions.  As the Venezuelan man sitting across from me put it after witnessing his first glorious Hiromi show, "It's not just how she plays... you can tell just how much she loves it, and those feelings transmit to everyone in the crowd."

Just like the first show, I met the people seated near me.  Tonight I will finally watch with a friend, but I've been on my own for the first two.  Luckily I usually enjoy talking to strangers.  If they're at a Hiromi show, something's right with them.

My companions were a French couple, a writer, and two people from Phoenix who had studied jazz and music theory in college. They were sharing stories about their recent vacation in Cuba when I joined them.  Their host was a man who had just published his second novel and wrote about weddings for the New York Times.  He gave me some advice about how to break in to the market: send short pieces to publications to make a name, and then it will be easier to sell a book.  I should have a project completed if it's fiction, but sometimes you can get an agent without a completed book.  I just know I have over 2,000 pages of shorter/medium pieces, many of which I could send to be published somewhere, two "books" I don't think I should publish yet, and one "book" that I am hoping to complete this year and share as my first real marketable work of art.  I'll share some of the introduction tomorrow.  I already knew about the approach he described, but it seemed like good luck to be seated next to him anyway.

Then Hiromi played.  She seemed to have even more energy than the first night.  I don't know how it's possible, but she manages to drop my jaw further every time.  She opened with the same three pieces, Warrior, Player and Dreamer.  Even so, she improvises so well that they felt like completely new experiences.

Then something absolutely yet counter-intuitively miraculous happened.  The people who had been in line in front of me while I waited outside had the table closest to Hiromi.  They had appeared to be acting strange during the show, and with about three songs remaining they actually got up to leave!  How could someone leave a Hiromi show?  I guess everyone has their own tastes.  I remember playing John Coltrane for my extended family a few years ago and having everyone complain and tell me to change it, and it was pure gold that I was playing for them, not strange experimental stuff.  I was happy though, because once she finished her current song I moved into the seat closest to the stage, directly behind her.  I've never been so close!

Best of all, she played "Firefly," my favorite song on her new CD, and probably the most beautiful and moving song I've ever heard her play.  I say that every time she has a new CD, but she manages to continue to top herself.  I watched with my mouth agape in awe pretty much the entire ten minutes that she played the solo song.  After that she played two more songs with the trio, Spirit and Alive, and I was in heaven.

The people I had been sitting with had never seen her live before, and the first thing they said was that they completely understood why I had come back to see her so many times.  It felt as though the entire world was glowing and vibrating pure loving energy.

I had to walk around outside for a little while before getting on the train, even though I was incredibly sleep deprived and really needed to catch up and go to bed.  I wandered to Sullivan Street and West 3rd, and then up to where Washington Park intersected Sullivan Street and you can see the Freedom Tower shining in the distance.

Of course, for the second straight night, the trains were over twenty minutes late.  Luckily, there was a strange man playing a keyboard, trumpet and singing.  He played "What a Wonderful World" as train after downtown train zoomed by in the hot sticky underground while we waited for the uptown trains.

That's all I have time to write tonight.  I'm going to show #14 now, and this time I will finally be joined by a friend, the same friend who told me about Hiromi in the first place.

Wherever they seat me tonight, I am very grateful that I get to see her at all :)

Absolutely Awe-Struck and Amazed

I will explain tomorrow...