Stranger in a Strange Land

At times this journey reminds me of a recurring dream-with-variations that I had many years ago. In the dream I find myself in an unfamiliar urban landscape. People are speaking English to each other, but the syntax and so the meaning of what they are saying is unintelligible to me. In one such dream, I saw the headlines of a newspaper someone was reading on a bus. They said something like, NOW TWICE AS INVISIBLE AT HALF THE COST YESTERDAY. I asked what it meant and was told to get off the bus if I didn't like it. I walked and walked, all through the night, until morning. There was a little corner cafe. I went in. A Mozart violin concerto was playing on the radio. A girl was putting flowers into a vase. "Good morning," she said, "would you care for a cup of tea?" In that simple and sensible query, the world became suddenly coherent again.

Sometimes days pass without conversation. The ocean speaks. The sky speaks. Likewise the mountains, the ravens and seagulls, each according to its nature. But it is a rarer thing to hear words that carry as much meaning as these intimations from Nature. I think it is due to distraction and haste. As the sociologist, Clara Mayer wrote:

"Rightly used, words are the single form of expression that we have in common to convey the intricacies of meaning; they are the channel to ourselves and our universe and each other. Time is needed to use them rightly, and also tranquility. And when we have no tranquility, neither do we have time in any sense that counts."

This morning was exceptional. I met an 80 year old man in the cafe. He had been a maker of aerial maps. And he loved stories. Telling stories and listening to stories. He was 80 and he knew the keen value of time. After coffee, he walked all the way to my van with me just to see the logo on its side, an illustration from Alfred P. .Morgan's 1913 book, "The Boy Electrician" depicting a young man at his homemade radio receiver and transmitting station. "That's when you could tune into the signals between stations!" He was delighted. "I'm glad we met," he said. "Hardly anybody asks me what I think about anything nowadays... Kinda like those radio signals we don't hear anymore." I hope he comes to the cafe again tomorrow. His name is Carl.

In any case, I will walk by the sea with Kukla and listen...

"I hear the mermaids singing, each to each."
__ T.S. Eliot