Belinda

My wife and I were sailing along the freeway. The Garmin was telling us in measured tones to turn right in one mile. Our Prius was making everything as easy and comfortable as possible for us. The climate inside was controlled. The air inside the pressed steel and safety glass cabin of our silvery space/time travelling device registered a cool 74 on the instrument panel. The changing climate outside of our windows was hardly very much of our concern at the moment. We were two moderns in our own technological time on a road trip to Kansas City.

Bluetooth carried the recorded voices of Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young from an iPodTouch to our ears. And then, when I managed to ignore that parroting Garmin, I managed to catch some fragments of the music and the words coming out of the speakers.

“When you see the Southern Cross for the first time

You understand now why you came this way

‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from is so small

But it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day”

A person could listen to a song for a hundred times and still not really hear it.

I’m not entirely sure just what I was hearing inside my Prius. I mean, we mostly live in a metaphorical world as it is. I have sometimes wondered how much of the world out there beyond the confines of my mind – even within the structures of mind - is real. Perhaps the four windows around my body, as I am strapped securely into my bucket seat, are just more screens like in the movies where you see the actors saying their lines with the images of trees and soybean fields just blurring by in low resolution. But if I think at all, metaphors are pretty much how I think.

They say that we were already living by our metaphors when the first human beings crossed out of Africa. And now, we are indeed still not machines, after all. Our thoughts are not just lines of code in a program. We are flesh, blood and neurotransmitters. But who counts on their fingers anymore? When’s the last time you rang someone up? What is it that you are dropping when a call gets dropped? Does anyone hear it on the grapevine anymore? It might be time to batten down the hatches. The world is awash in metaphors. Not all of them are fully tethered to the modern world. What do we mean by our lives today, not to mention our words?

Consider Alexander von Humboldt. When he crossed the equator in 1799 during something like a three month journey on a wooden sailing ship across the ocean, he was a human in his late twenties. Somewhere near South America the man wrote these words in his journal: “On the night of the 4^th of July I saw the Southern Cross for the first time it all its splendor.”  And then in his wandering, he and his traveling companions tramped through the rain forest in all of its wildness. They climbed the Andes without Vibram soles – what shoes they had had shredded. On these jaunts in that day, they travelled on foot or in small boats. They did have some guides, but von Humboldt mostly just made his maps as he went.

And as before and since, there was metaphor mingling in everything he recorded of his journeys. So you might possibly try to imagine what von Humboldt really meant when he said that he saw the Southern Cross for the first time. This is what he actually wrote: “I saw the Southern Cross for the first time.” I don’t happen to believe that he was just talking about the stars. But he was talking about stars.

And so what about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young?

None of us are talking in zeros and ones when we describe our travels or write a song. We blend letters into words and words into images and images into meaning.  Metaphors. Music. And at some point I, too, will cross an equator. I have traveled in a hybrid ship along a concrete highway at speeds that would have been unimaginable to Alexander von Humboldt. And he might still have understood something of my words now as I now echo the words of many others. In reality, I never actually saw that equator – that imaginary line dividing North from South. Neither did von Humboldt. Whose idea was ‘north’ in the first place?’ It did happen to be von Humboldt’s idea to describe human-caused climate change. Alexander von Humboldt imagined new metaphors for his natural world. But the universe is still much bigger than his or my life.

So back to here and now. Of course, I never saw those stars in that sky. The ones that von Humboldt saw. The Southern Cross. Remember, if you will, a metaphor is made up out of a tangling of the real and the imagined.

So here’s now my question: do you believe in an expansive mind?

“Got out of town on a boat

goin’ to the southern islands …

I have been around the world …”

Perhaps I should go ahead and tell you a little bit more of reality as Dawn and I lived it on our road trip.

After less than an hour, we docked our Prius. There were red bricks everywhere. On the streets. The sidewalks. Even the buildings rising over our heads were made out of brick. We stood at the Crossroads. My traveling companion suggested that we head east. I could see train tracks. Union Station. But we weren’t heading that way, so I went ahead and followed Dawn.

At one point we stopped at a gallery. There were large paintings behind large windows. It turned out that the woman inside also did upholstery. She had a friendly curly-beige-furred little dog. I twizzled it’s ears. It jumped up against my leg for more. But this is hardly very important information.

After few more minutes, we followed her directions through the brick streets and buildings toward Central and turned north.

Lulu’s Thai Noodle Shop was on the corner. It was packed with the lunchtime crowd. I had never been to Lulu’s before, but Lulu’s had hardly actually risen to metaphorical levels. I was expecting to eat, not to see the Southern Cross.

We waited on a bench. There were talking strangers all around. Lipstick here. A buttoned-down collar there. A tall bald man carried plates with noodles through the aisle. He never looked from side to side.

Then a woman in black called our names. We followed her to a table in the corner and she left menus. The lunch menu was simple, less than ten different noodle dishes - each one - $8.99.

I had already nearly decided on a dish that I had never eaten before: Beef Jantaboon. When our server came up to our table, my traveling companion asked what was really popular among their offerings at Lulu’s. The server seemed really friendly to me, but maybe she was just really good at her job. She looked young. But then I am old. I had thought at a glance that she was pretty with her thick curly dark hair tied back, but then I had hardly looked beyond her eyes. They weren’t glittery like stars. I think that they sparkled more like the sun reflecting off ripples on a wide ocean – or a river. But I’m afraid that I’m slipping into the doldrums of detail here.

The young woman was suggesting three items from the menu before us – including the Jantaboon. It was easy for me to follow her advice. Dawn, my wife and travelling companion, sitting across the table from me - we shared forkfuls from each other’s bowls of noodle. The noodles were good. We each got a small crab Rangoon, but certainly that bit wasn’t important, either.

I occasionally looked out from our table and watched how the hem of the cotton print of the server’s skirt fluttered as our server danced between the tables. Dawn had a Thai Chai Tea. It looked like muddy river water over ice in a glass, to me.

As we were finally getting up to leave, the server came towards us one more time carrying a silver pitcher, beaded with condensation. “I was going to offer you more water, but it looks like I’m too late,” she said.

And that’s when I saw the Southern Cross for the first time, metaphorically speaking.

“I have been around the world

Lookin’ for that woman girl

Who knows that love can endure

And you know it will.”

Sometime things just ring out in your ears. Maybe this doesn’t make sense to you. It’s metaphorical. Of course much of all of this was almost all in my imagination and not likely to be entirely what you will think in any case from your reading. But that reality is no more. Only I am left to tell my tale. But listen to me: sometime a look in someone’s eyes is all that it takes. And maybe you’ve missed it a hundred times. And maybe sometimes you see it.

She was just a friendly server in reality.

Metaphors are what happen when you take one real thing and you make up something else.

The only real question is whether you believe that love can endure. We are going to have to mind our metaphors for that to really happen. The climate will be a-changin’ .

But as I said, my wife and I are thoroughly modern. We paid the check with virtual plastic money. Our server had left the bill on the table with a smile – not an emoticon. I am telling you that her smile was real. Her voice was real - and friendly. She had seen us playing with our devices on the table, taking tourist shots, before we got our food. She had suggested that the Lulu’s sign just outside made a nice backdrop for a selfie. She would turn out to be right about that too.

And if I hadn’t glanced down at the check, I never would have learned that her name was Belinda. And now I know. She’s heading into a world I will never see.

But not every detail matters. Nor does it matter that Alexander von Humboldt’s ship was called the Pizarro. Or that my wife and I, as you might know, were just sailing in our Prius across the state line for lunch and a little sight-seeing.

“I have my ships and my flags are all a-flying

She is all I have left and music is her name.”

Alexander von Humboldt, CSN&Y and I will just be sharing a few words as we write. The metaphors mean for each of us what they mean.

But there is this:

when you see the Southern Cross for the first time

you understand now why you came this way…

I heartily suggest that you just go ahead and listen to the CSN&Y YouTube for yourself if you wish. I don't know what else I can say.

Link to Crosby, Stills and Nash: Southern Cross - YouTube