A man, who I haven’t seen for years, notices me putting up a poster in a coffee shop. He calls out my name, we exchange a few cheerful words. He invites me to sit down for tea and I decline, seeing the other walls I must put up my posters on in my mind’s eye. We exchange a few more lines, and I find that I don’t want to stop talking, but rather take up his offer for tea and enter into a long conversation that leads to new ideas and suggestions I had never fathomed.
One of the things mentioned by my friend is that the ancient hieroglyph for a city is what looks like a crude “x”, a mimicking of a crossroad occurrence. He then goes into discussing the different purposes of cities throughout time and is trying to understand a modern purpose for Philadelphia. He is much more into grand ideas than I am I think. He speaks of books about cultural waves and revolutions when,in my mind’s eye again, I am now imagining the afternoons I would sit in my grandmother’s yellow kitchen and just stare at the tree outside, how all I could do with an elderly person was to just be still. Not that my friend is not also an appreciator of small things, he even suggested that I should read Neruda’s Ode To Small Things, a favorite of his, which I may due now because of his mentioning it.
What I think this is, this being my piece for tonight, is a deliberate expression of gratitude to serendipity. I like real time. I like being brought into situations that I wasn’t planning on and having reaction met with mine and vise versa. My friend mentioned that he feels, although he does alot within the internet realm, it’s mostly him seeking out things he knows he wants to seek out, or a variation of those things. The room for a tangible 3D experience decreases drastically.
I love this chance experience. A GPS system to me feels more like a ball and chain and often on a tour I like to “spidey-sense” my way to a place. I like the finger to the page of an atlas. Being able to locate myself on a map is more calming than seeing my circle move along a line that exists in a square screen until it tells me to turn. I like ending up at circuses I hadn’t ever known that existed. I like stumbling into a café that turns out to have the worst breakfast ever. I like finding out by riding by on my bike that someone airbrushed the word forgive onto a chain-link fence and you can only see it from a certain distance at a certain angle.
I’d like to wish you many unplanned adventures that show you things you had never imagined or chose to seek out. Goodnight, Birdie
This is a beautiful entry. Thank you. But you know, this is funny, the GPS thing. I've always loved the finger-on-the-atlas way of maneuvering a road trip, and I still do. Especially sitting in the parking lot of the restaurant after breakfast and decided what the route will be for the morning, with only an ultimate destination in mind. "Let's try this road." I've seen so many beautiful things that way.
ReplyDeleteBut ... just after New Year's, my girlfriend and I were driving back to Charlotte from Washington, D.C., and I was bored of following Highway 29, so we turned on her GPS, using the "shortest distance" mode, rather than the "fastest" mode ... and the directions suddenly, unexpectedly, took us across a little mountain on a tiny one-lane country road, through the icy hollows and over the steep curves, and everyone we passed waved at us. Later GPS led us through quaint and pretty downtown Danville, Va, and industrial downtown High Point, NC, where we saw a furniture store that was, apparently, called "OH." We went through towns and parts of towns that I've never been through before and will probably never have a reason to visit, wouldn't have thought to lead my finger through on the map. And that we were following these mysterious directions beamed to us from somewhere in space made it even more strange and fun, somehow. Sometimes we find serendipity in unexpected places.