a Zen sunday

I really love my new neighborhood, and on a normal day the A train takes me express to 42nd street in about 22 minutes. This weekend there was a lot of construction and rerouting in the D, A and F lines that caused my ride from Washington Heights to Soho to be 1 hour 25 minutes, where I was, incidently, going to a Zen meditation. But trying to get back uptown from SoHo to get my music for a rehearsal back in west midtown, and to change my clothes for a nice bar gig in east midtown proved impossible due to the trains. The C wasn’t running at all. The A was running on the local track and only at 20 min intervals. The D was only running up above 34th, and even there although it was supposedly an express train, it was moving maddeningly slowly. The F was skipping stops randomly…different stops depending on whether you were going uptown or downtown, and the rerouting instructions coming from the speakers in the subway cars were indecipherable. Needless to say, my Zen turned to desperation as I realized I would not have time to get home for my music and clothes for a rehearsal and then later a performance. After arriving to the rehearsal 7 minutes late and without my music, I called and asked a friend to come meet me at the rehearsal studio, get my apartment keys, go all the way up to Wash Heights, pick out an outfit for me, grab my microphone and meet me at the bar gig in 90 minutes. I muddle my way through my rehearsal, and travel, in my Zen rags (jeans, ragged t-shirt and open toed sandals), to the fancy French restaurant with the fancy east-side clientele. Within 15 minutes my friend arrives with my outfit, and within moments I change into SUPERpianoMAN, paste on a happy grin and begin my first set with the Charlie Chaplin song, “Smile.”