Massive thunderstorms played havoc with our flight from Atlanta to DC, which in turn threatened to put the kibosh on our flight to Shannon, Ireland. A rather large, rubbery and ineffective woman of Caribbean descent seemed to indicate that there was nothing anyone on this earth could do to help us. Perhaps we should just turn around and go home . . . ? Try again tomorrow? Stay in DC and take up squatter's rights?
We made phone calls, pulled strings. There was a shift change going on at the booking desk but these loud talking, brash Dominican women were willing to go the extra mile, bless their hearts. Perhaps there was some kind of friction between them and the Caribbean woman who was so useless. I told them that
she said it was impossible, but they pounded the keyboards and booked us on a flight to Dublin where we'd meet a bus, which would take us across the Island to Shannon where we might or might not meet up with our luggage. It was a calculated risk and we jumped at it.
There is almost always turbulence over Newfoundland. The plane bucked and swayed and threatened to upset my dinner of vaguely chicken-like patties and colorless vegetables. There is almost always turbulence over Newfoundland and nearly always some form of turbulence in taking a group of students overseas. It's part of the adventure . . .
Skies were grey in Ireland the next day, as if we had landed in a mysterious island that lay beneath a pile of uncarded, oily wool. The georgian buildings were shiny with rain and puddles lay black on the streets. The bus rumbled on, going west beneath the rainy skies and I felt happy. Most of my travelers were comatose from jet-lag and the difficulty of resting fully while sitting up in economy airline seats,
but I was wide awake. I can sleep in the hotel room - I never want to miss a second of being alive and conscious in a foreign country - and so I was alone on the bus, surrounded by the dead, and I was the only one to see the horseman.
The 21st century was all around us in Ireland but it didn't seem to matter to the horseman who came hacking along at a good clip on the sidewalk, pacing our bus briefly. He wore a traditional flatcap pulled low to the bridge of his nose and I could not see his face but I'm sure it was shining with the sheer joy of trotting his horse bareback along the suburban streets of Outer Limmerick with rain sifting down and no cars to speak of to belch poison into his air. He wore a white sweater and his pants were tucked into knee-high wellies, and he sat that horse the way you're supposed to, back straight and shoulders square. In one smooth motion he pulled his horse to the right and they floated up and over a low stone wall and, for a short time longer I could see them quartering away across a lawn and then they were gone.
In one form or another I see that Horseman every time I travel. He's part of the mosaic of haikus that I encounter each time I pack my carry-on and look backwards with a pang in my heart at another leavet-taking
Last summer I was again awake while all those around me were sleeping as we took off on an early flight out of Rome towards Germany. The sun was coming up over the rumpled fabric of the Alps and you could see the Mediterranean like a streak of blue on the horizon. The pilot's voice came over the intercom, his German accent low and calm. We were coming over the Alps, he said, and would soon be passing the
Zugspitze, Germany's highest peak.
I had not found
God in any of the churches we had visited that summer – not even in the elaborate
cathedrals we were leaving behind in Italy, full of frescoes by various masters
and the broken bone fragments of half-forgotten saints . . . but as we made
that slow, timeless pirouette over the mountain I felt myself open up to the
divine. The air outside was what overly excited outdoor writers describe as
“crystal clear”: the mountain peak that seemed just beneath our wing was so
sharply focused that it seemed to pulse. Everything I’d ever read about
glaciers was written on that singular mountain, right up to and including the
vast saucer shaped cirque at the very peak where a chalet and four wheel drive
vehicles were clearly visible despite the fact that the valleys below were lost
in the astigmatism of altitude. Who had driven that vehicle to the summit,
where snow still piled up along the jagged edges? Who was blessed enough to
breath in that hard, cold, sharp air? Hanging valleys carved the sides of the
peak and silver braided rivers curved and recurved down the sides until they
fed into valley lakes that were seafoam green. Turning my head I could see the Alps roll away back South to the sea like a vast herd of
gigantic, primitive fauna . . .
I turned again,
looking up and down the aisles, hoping to share this moment with
someone who was as moved as I was. Only one person in our travel group was
still away – he and I locked eyes and, from a distance, his eyebrows going up
and down spoke volumes. This was The Mountain peak which holy men for eons have
sought out to get closer to the Divine. This was The Mountain that the Priest
wanted Frederick Henry to find in A Farewell to Arms. with someone who was as moved as I was. Only one person in
our travel group was still away – he and I locked eyes and, from a distance,
his eyebrows going up and down spoke volumes. This was The Mountain peak which
holy men for eons have sought out to get closer to the Divine. This was The
Mountain that the Priest wanted Frederick Henry to find in
The plane banked
again and The Mountain pulled away as if it leaving us. Below the plane undifferentiated green hinted at detail that we
were too high to make out clearly – but if I turned all the way around I could
count the rivers that lovingly braided The Mountain like silver chains on a
priestess. The plane banked once more and The Mountain was gone. I sat back in
my seat knowing that I had been given a gift.
I lived on that high for weeks later the way some people do from religious retreats. From time to time I'd look away from whatever I was doing and the image of that mountain would fill my mind and I'd become strangely calm and happy.
These are the things that are difficult to photograph or capture on a hastily scrawled postcard. These are the moments I live for, like that time in Venice by the fountain . . .
Right off Piazza San Marco
there is a little side piazza tucked in tight to the flank of the duomo itself.
I figured I’d settle in there, where the sun was filtered. Children were loose in the
piazza chasing the pigeons who allowed them to get just so close before rising as one and taking flight. The campanile
tolled the hour as campanili do throughout Italy despite the fact that this is
a culture that doesn’t recognize the tyranny of time. Asian travel groups moved
in platoons and Americans spoke and laughed a little too loudly. The air was
dense with decay . . .
Somewhere in the church of San Marco the legendary bones of the
legendary Saint Mark were kept as trophies and medieval tourist attractions. My
own bones pressed back against the shady side of the church as I decompressed
and gave away all the Time that my American psyche was carefully hoarding, tallying,
sharing out. Eventually I became aware of what I took to be a father and son
sitting next to me. They were Asian of some type but they insisted on speaking
together in heavily accented English for some reason. It was like listening to
a Samurai film. The father was small and trim and wearing glasses; the son was
in his twenties and fat. Something had come between them and the son’s voice,
with its peculiar accent, was sour with pout.
“You NEVER let me touch it! I
thought this time but no!”
The father did not raise his
voice; his dignity was graceful despite the fact that he was on the defensive.
“Yes, yes. It is, of course, my fault. Mine. I made a mistake. Yes.”
“You never let me. You let HER but when I ask, you become angry.”
“You must . . . understand. I think of you . . . differently. Therefore I treat you
differently. This is my . . . error. You are my son.”
“It’s embarrassing!”
“Come, come my son. Let us get
some gelato. It is my error. Next time! Next time!”
I watched them walk to the gelateria knowing full well that I would
never know where this conversation came from and where it ended, after the
gelato. I didn’t want to know. Every summer I find myself in Europe and in
every city I endeavor to lose my students on a gondola ride or a trip up the Eifel Tower
so that I can be loose, the Poor Wayfarer – a mute witness to small objects and
events that are avatars of god. Il dulce
fa niente.
In Killarney, Ireland
I once found myself in a pub just off the square where the horse carts are
tethered. The rain whirled like steam and, despite the fact that it was July,
it was chilly so I followed the sound of music into a smoky little public house
where a trio sat upon chairs and played folk music while looking past and
beyond each other – as if they were three individuals and their confluence
here, at this time and place, within the framework of this song, was a strange
coincidence. The air was thick and sweet with the smell of cigarette smoke and
spilled beer and wet wool; a the faerie music whirled madly and sweetly like a
hyperactive child, produced by a man with a guitar, a young lady with a fiddle
and a third young lady with a concertina. It was the concertina girl I focused
on. Her lovely wedge-heeled slingback kept time with the music and she played that
odd instrument like someone who has made her peace with a difficult marriage.
She looked away from all of us.
One year we were in Lucerne, Switzerland
during a folk festival. White tents made up temporary beer gardens that were
full of singing and heroic drinking. Sausages were for sale at every corner and
mustard was de rigeur. For a while I
made my way along the waterfront, visiting the junk vendors with several of my
students. At one such I found a sheep bell on a deeply worn leather collar;
when I shook it, the fey tone summoned a memory of another trip to Switzerland
when we stayed at an inn at the foot of a mountain that was shrouded by high
altitude weather. Sitting in the back garden you could hear
the plaintive tolling of sheep bells in the clouds and I thought I’d never
heard anything lovelier.
I asked the price of this bell
and the young, preteen beauty with her porcelain skin and clear eyes, put her
palms together and smiled shyly at me. “So!” she said. It was a word to buy time.
She raised her fingers to indicate four Swiss Francs. As we were walking away
one of my students laughed at me for making the purchase but when I shook the
bell it again brought me to that hill up in the Alps
. . .
The streets of Lucerne were filled with people in folk
costumes and from time to time a group would coalesce and then the air would
still as their voices came together in harmony to sing old hymns a capella. Men with alpenhorns would
come together in synchronicity to produce that low cetacean thrum that seemed
to have the power of transportation. I again slipped away from my crowd and
found a park where I could sit and watch young men stand with acumen, carefully
arranging chess pieces the size of elementary school children on a board that was
affixed to the ground. Chess creates its own time and now when I shake my
shepherd’s bell I feel the mountain in the mist but also the diffusion of time
that is chess played in a park on a July afternoon in Lucerne while alpenhorns
moan theatrically in the distance . . .
Parks – why don’t we have parks
like these in the States? Music again steered me to a trio, this time in a park
in Dublin where
the music wheeled and whirled capriciously while swans cruised like ships of
the line on station. I lay on my back on a bench and watched a young couple
make up from something or other. He held her hands in his and faced her,
speaking softly and urgently; she looked dubious.
One suitably rainy day I
slipped away from my group and travelled through the tin-type weather to the Pere Lachaise
Cemetery in Paris to walk the narrow lanes between the
houses of the dead while rain drops slipped from the leaves of plane trees like
tears. All alone I navigated among the bones of poets to find Jim Morrison’s
grave tucked away in a fold of the land. There, to prevent desecration, a guard
stood watch. We caught each other’s eyes and he smiled like a child found
during Hide and Seek.
On another visit to Paris I sat
alone outside the Louvre and watched young girls with the stage presence only
young girls can have shrieking and laughing while chasing each other through
the dour and dignified adults, spraying each other with condiments. Asian
tourists stopped and watched woodenly – I would say, inscrutably – their women folk wearing bonnets like something out
of a Ford Western to keep their skin lily white.
In Innsbruck I ate herring and listened to two
American priests argue hotly over some matter of theology. On the island of Capri I watched a well dressed gentleman
saunter casually over towards a wall near the harbor, away from the shops
hawking brick a brack. Despite his elegant and philosophical air, I could see
that he had unzipped and was peeing against someone’s garden wall while
studying the turquoise water philosophically. In Athens
a gentleman from Argentina
was giving away fliers in the Plaka. He attempted to explain to me his idea for
hovering airships that would enforce the law from above. He spoke in
conspiratorial tones.
In Rome, alone again, the gypsies stalked me
with the glacial insistence of lizards. You could find solace in the old Forum
beneath the olive trees. You could also find solace among the ruins of the
tower atop the hill of Assisi where the cultivated plains of Umbria roll away in feminine curves.
In Amsterdam I watched the hotel staff
unhurriedly pursue a man in his underwear who held his head and continuously
called out in English, “You must call ze ambulance! You must call ze
ambulance!” The hotel staff moved implacably toward him, herding him the way
you might a chicken loose from the coop.
I could tell more: the stone
stairways down the cliffs of Sorrento that lead to the beaches and the feral
cats and the sound of conversation and laughter from young men and women
drinking wine in the moonlight; the English dames on the train out of London
who had nowhere to sit, and who spoke of me in the third person as someone who might move if I had a shred of decency; the cloying, mildewed
smell of the ovens at Dachau . . .
I am the Poor Wayfarer. I’ve
been a mute witness to ten thousand small things in cities where I am an alien.
The natives look through me and the tourists bump me as they pass. I am as at
home in these cities as I am in the town where my tiny house sits among the oak
trees.
