Travelogue

My legs ache. Could there be anymore names for the color of leaves, lyrical allusions to impending snow? I’m not sure it would matter if he was talking of France or Kenya, instead of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I hear myself buzzing comment out of earshot; I hear the accent in my whisper.

Click—Under the clouds, Dr. Hathaway and his wife stand with their arms around each other in front of a silver Chevy.

The drift in my attention piles up in against a trough of milieu and cliffs and sea level. I am distracted by flat geography; a landscape pretending its own vertigo. Hathaway boasts conquest and capture. He poses stiffly as if standing on Kilimanjaro. His pose is misplaced. It is not Iwo Jima, not My Lai, not the slope or the climate, the brush and trees, not the voices or smoke rippling out of villages. It’s the ruckus mucking about in the foreground the lens is focused on.

His slides alternate bright tulips with alleys. Oaks tower in front of stained glass. They seem hazy; it is my eyes adhering to obligation. He clicks past a dark slide, goes back, clicks past it again. He looks at us and remains quiet. He clicks back to the dark slide:

Click—A body drapes across a fallen log. A gash of dripping red starting at the throat, furrows down through a plaid shirt tucked in his trousers.

I hear a wince. Hathaway does too and clicks to the next slide.

Click—a severed arm lay on a bench beside a historical marker.

Click, click—two slides of legs discarded in metal barrels with the feet sticking out.

The color is stunning.

Hathaway stoops over the projector and switches off the bulb. The fan continues to whir. The lights in the room come up. A gray-haired man in sandals coughs into the crook of his arm. We blink and shuffle in chairs. I feel as if he handed a cell phone to an Aztec.

Two women in the front row whisper, “He has misplaced his manners.” One says while smoothing the polka dots on her dress.

The projector is cooling; it creaks and pops. Hathaway is in complete control. The evening is a simple dusk, a tight-wire act with Carpathian horses. His certainty tells the clown when to fall and roll about the ring.

F-stops and Pinot Noir buzz in the echo of the hall. I thrust my hand into his and ask for his position. He has difficulty with the longitude.

`

dear Larry

I hear the accent in my whisper.

i came back to read your whispers again.

as always .....much enjoyed.

silent lotus


`

So glad you did, sl.

Lar, This is really good.  Maggie