A dislocation...
“We’ll go to Nidden for the summer,” my wife told me. “You can write your paper there. We can swim in the Baltic and you can draw inspiration from the artist’s colony.”
My paper is
important. I am a metaphysicist and believe I have intuited an important facet
of time: that it is not a single continuum but a series of parallel progressions
between which, in theory at least, one might cross, by accident or design, to
enter a reality that may be radically estranged from one’s own; or much the
same, but rendered subtly different by some slight accident of history; a
battle lost, instead of won; a weapon that wasn’t forged, a prince who lived
when he had died.
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| A.Savin/Wikipedia |
So now we sat in the departure lounge. We became
aware of an elderly man, dressed in a suit but without a tie; he looked quite
distinguished. He was staring at his ticket and at the signs over the gates. He
seemed confused.
My wife
stood up. “Are you looking for your gate?” she asked politely.
He looked
at her. “Yes,” he said. “I thought it was announced. I am on the Easyjet flight
to Bratislava.”
Now my wife
looked confused. “Easyjet?” she said, “I do not know them. Where is
Bratislava?”
“Bratislava.
In Slovakia,” he said. “I am going to attend a conference. I am giving a paper.
On philosophy.” He laughed nervously. “I am a logical positivist. But it seems
one must use intuition to find one’s gate.” He pointed at the gate sign for our
own flight. “Surely that sign is a joke.”
My wife
frowned. “Might I see your ticket?” she asked. She studied it, then nodded
briskly. ”Ah. Look, that is this gate, here.”
“You are
sure?”
She nodded, and took his arm and guided him to his gate. He thanked her, but seemed uncertain. Beyond the window I could see the tail-fin of his jet, with the big red-and-white flag, the familiar crest offset a little to the left of centre. She walked back to me.
“What on earth is logical positivism?” I asked. “I suppose it may be one of these wretched modernist movements that question the use of intuition. And where is Bratislava? It sounds vaguely Bohemian.”
“I really
don’t know, dear,” she said. “But his ticket was for Austro-Hungarian Airlines Flight
470, Pressburg via Lemberg.” She glanced at me a little mischievously. “I
wonder,” she said, “perhaps he has strayed, by accident or design…”
“Oh, do stop,” I said. Ahead lay the Baltic, sun, sea and the warm sand of the Curonian Spit.
I smiled; she smiled back.
Cold
Everything is cold here
Homecoming
A sort of love story
Solitude
A Cold War story
Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
A question of human geography
Hiraeth
A yearning…
Strange Places
A spirit in the sky
Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street
Belonging
Do you? Where?
Leaving Home
A house has memories
