Thinking of far away places
does not necessarily suggest a discontentment with here. It is with that
foundation I continue.
I have forever had a longing within me to explore conversations with those at
foreign Cafés, drinking recommendations while attempting to consume
questionable menu items. It is the toe in the pool, anticipating the
uncomfortable chill all the while hoping to be awash with warmth and
enlightenment.
I have not yet been to Italy,
though it surely leads the pack with flair and impressive landscapes. It sets
upon the Earth, as does a great book sitting quietly on the shelf at the
library, not hidden but simply there for the taking. One must discover it,
build a passion for it, and of course have a library card.
It is in my dream of Italy that
I sit at a sidewalk table listening to a local telling me the history of his
village, the unexpected excitement at his sister’s wedding, and of Giuseppe,
his loyal dog, presently asleep at his feet. In truth, such an encounter would
contain communication stumbles, background noise, and various fumes from
traffic and from Giuseppe. However, this story is mine for the telling, and reality has been edited.
Neil Armstrong must have thought about far away places and maybe with a
deafening silence replacing street noise and forgoing the sidewalk cafe. A silence not
unlike that currently shared by our ancestors. They are stories no longer told,
as the tellers themselves remain checked out. It is not my intent to draw any
correlation between death and space, except to suggest silence as a common
denominator.
Every Friday for years, I have dragged cans down to the curb, cans full of
silent wrappers, motionless advertising, and exhausted toothpaste vessels.
Silent containers transported to vacant hillsides, where circling birds hunt
for bits, morsels tucked in corners, wadded in cellophane and food remnants disfigured by microwaves.
It is the avoidance of this silence that makes here tolerable. There is a
certain comfort in knowing that the falling tree makes a crashing, thunderous
noise, even in our absence. We need not see the darkness to know upon closing
the door the light has gone. It is a faith-based refrigerator upon which
empires have been built.
Limitations to our comprehension of far away places stand like sturdy fence
posts at the edge of our imagination. We can neither see over nor climb such a
fence, just as we can never fully know who built it. Instead, we make noise. We cry
as babies, and squawk as teenagers. We build televisions to chatter back at us when
we sit alone. We press cell phones to our heads, like seashells that are full of friends
and appointments, all the while knowing that eventually we ourselves will be scheduled
for a Friday pick-up.
Side note: I started this thinking about travel and far away places and somehow ended up talking about death. Maybe it was one of those questionable menu items that altered my journey, or maybe death is simply the farthest away place one can go. Farther perhaps than Italy.
