Took Flight, First Light

I may have me a coincidence brewing. I typically wait for at least 3 occurrences of something before I consider it a coincidence – and I may be pushing this one a bit. It’s a stretch, but bear with me.

Seriously? It’s “bear” with me? It seems a little strange to me, and it seems like it would leave the door open to polite misunderstandings over honey, and to mauling.

So I was walking in to work along a route I don’t take every day. It’s a route that’s a tad shorter, but involves a little more uphill than others, so I typically just use it on those days I’m running a little late. Say a day I had to have a big boy sit down before leaving, perhaps a day where there was a misunderstanding with the bear with me – a sexy misunderstanding… But on the way in I’m passed by a bus whose advertisement covered side tells me that my job’s in Wyoming. I didn’t know this, and frankly was unprepared for the trip.

Wyoming’s trying to gather itself a workforce thought I. Good for them. Then I sort of stopped walking so quickly (I was running late) while I tried to yank something out of my memory that was tickling back there.

I remembered the week prior, walking the same route in (just didn’t want to get out of bed that day) and at the same block had been listening to the Calexico song “Sunken Waltz”. “Sunken Waltz” tells the story of Carpenter Mike who sets aside his tools and leaves for the empty spaces of far away where he begins listening to his dreams and builds a flying machine. I remember this clearly because as I was focusing on the words, I felt like Carpenter Mike took off to Wyoming – I don’t know why, I just did. But I looked up to check the traffic light, saw the Alaska Building, and realized that this here city was once the fabled far away West. I guess it was the idea of all that empty space that made me think of Wyoming.

And here I was, almost exactly a week later, being again reminded of Wyoming. Why?

Maybe no reason, maybe because it’s where Captain MIA, my drug addled ex-roommate on the run, was last known to be. Maybe next week, when I sleep through my alarm, I will see him standing on a corner across James Street.

By the by, Kickers loves him some Calexico. He dances a mad, crazy dance to some Calexico. No that you should base what you listen to on an infant necessarily, but why aren’t you listening to Calexico?