Today there was a funeral procession fifty feet outside my bedroom window winding it's way down a dirth path. Flutes and other wind instruments were being played in a kind of Wagner death procession tone. The line of people were somber, some of the men smoking cigarettes, noone caring if they wore black. The tone and pace of the music changed and it felt more like a celebration, a celebration of a life lived, or maybe of a death entered. It was not a typical funeral, my mind had not been exposed to this kind of celebration or was it a lament? The music left echoes of voodoo. Those instruments, what were they? The dirt path with garbage piled on either side, and the funeral procession. I stopped walking and watched, although I heard it long before I seen it. I heard it from my house. I looked out and thought it was a performance troupe practiscing for the Spring Festival. A friend informed me otherwise.

That music...it creeped me out. It changed rythyms frequently. At times the sound was like a shrill cry and at others like a slow serenade. I thought I could see someone cry, but there was distance and a crowd. There was no casket, but there was distance and a crowd so maybe I just didn't see it. I left the scene, feeling sorely out of place with my surroundings and I wanted to eat which felt disgusting. Who was it? A mother? A father?

I was back in the neighborhood twenty minutes later and the procession had moved to the street. There were piles of people on the back of trucks. And there was that music. It was a constant, a steady companion to this....ordeal. What was it, why did I feel so detatched. It was the music, the properly composed score that reminded someone of a sour taste yet allowed for a sweet smell to intrude at the same time. The trucks and the sounds moved away as I lit a smoke.