It’s a small world…afterall
It is! I am currently reading Les Miserables, quite possibly the most quotable novel I’ve thrown the ol’ eyes at, and the other day between page 688 and 723 V.H. tossed something in there about the dangerous difference between thought and reverie. Thought, says the wordsmith, is a productive activity; reverie (en l’autre main) is destructive. All this to say that I am more often in reverie than in thought, but I find that getting back on track is as easy as driving when one’s vehicle’s alignment is twisted: you simply jerk the wheel.
I found myself in reverie the other day. I was sitting listening to the birds bicker in the backyard (the birds in our backyard have more family problems than the Medicis) and found myself thinking about Florida.
Florida, for those of you who know the place, is in some ways paradaisical and in many others ways generally home. I miss it sometimes, especially the trees (my friend Clara reminds me that if God had a wall calendar he would have pictures of people on it, and not trees for He came not to save the trees). I was thinking about myself in various contexts and realizing that I have two lives: I have a Peru life, with Peruvian friends and customs and thought processes and cultural norms; and I have an American life, which is in many ways opposite from my Peruvian life. These two worlds may exist side by side geographically, and I personally ought to have the privilege to hop from one to the other as a toad would from one lily pad to another seeking aphids.
I’ve always had trouble with Venn Diagrams. You know what I mean, the blobs that overlap or underlap or do not lap at all and therefore produce the desired mathematical/statistical results. Well, if I imagine Peru and Florida as two such blobs I might think about myself as the intersection of the two blobs…but the thought is problematic.
Perhaps this will help you to understand how I feel when remembrances, images, snippets of news and whatnot find their way to Peru. A visitor to my hometown returns, a friend travels back, a father comes to see his son. All of these are wonderful things, but they are (as unlikely as this sounds) earth shaking events for me because they tip the table on which I’ve set my chess pieces and the queens and rooks totter and bump each other. My two worlds are catching each other. The martians are landing, and I will take them to my leader.
Caleb,
this is a great article, I too struggle with Venn Diagrams. . . and my seemingly double life. I feel as though I constantly have one foot planted in each country and often feel a stranger to both. But when my parents came it was a really weird but exhilarating experience; ergo, finally some one else understands me.
Charles Wright
October 5, 2007 at 10:45 pm