Eavesdropping

I was at an Imax cinema with a friend from Europe who was over for a visit. She was hanging around the lobby area where there was a gift shop. I went and stood in line, not liking to take sloppy seconds when it comes to seating.

Three people were in front of me. Two women and a young man around 18 years of age. I assume that one of the women was his mother (perhaps both these days).

There isn't much to do in line except eavesdrop on others and listen to their conversations. The young man was speaking to the one woman and told her that he didn't want to see Paris but he did want to see Rome, "but not with you along," he emphasized, not in a mean way, more in a "I-don't-want-my-mother-tagging-along" way.

What he said next interested me. It interested me because it was more profound than I think the young man realized. And what he said resonated within me as well.

He told her: "I don't much care for natural art. I prefer man-made art."

Given that the Imax was just outside the gates of the Grand Canyon it was obvious what he was talking about. And I totally agreed.

I don't want to say that the Grand Canyon isn't particularly unusual and visually stimulating. It is. But as I surveyed the vast canyon stretched out before me I could see it a colorful mural more than I could a natural feature.

I don't dislike natural beauty. I actually like it very much. And while I can enjoy certain natural beauties I too prefer the man-made.

I could sit at the end of an airport runway for hours and watch the majesty of planes take-off. I assume Homeland Security would quickly put a stop to that in their paranoid fits of bureaucratic harassment however.

There is one spot that always brought me to life. It was a stairway from the San Francisco subway system. Allow me to share something from a piece of fiction I wrote, describing this very spot.

For a moment Stella stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up toward the sky. A series of concrete steps reached upwards like some subterranean Tower of Babel. At this very moment the stairs were empty. The brightness of the sun was illuminating the stairwell and in comparison everything around them seemed dark.

There was but a tiny sliver of sky, bright in its blueness, visible to them. The contrast of the sky to the subway tunnel was what caught Tony’s attention. But Stella was looking at that which framed the sliver of blue above—she started climbing slowly to the surface. As she did she whispered back to Tony, who was one step behind her. “Feel it. Use all your senses.” Her hands caressed the chrome railings as she climbed. Her feet could feel the steady foundations beneath her. “Listen,” she said. “Do you hear it? Those sounds are the heart beat of the city.” A cool fresh breeze off the Bay was blowing. Channelled by the stairwell it would sweep down into the tunnel. Stella’s hair blew in the wind. The scarf around her neck wanted to break free and fly. “Can you smell it?” she asked.

Tony paused and sniffed the air. The sea breeze caught the exhaust fumes of cars above and carried them to him. Along the way the smells of city life were mixed in and created an intoxicating fragrance. He smiled as he realized that some of that smell was Stella’s own perfume. He was never so aware of his own sense of smell before. He was astonished at how in one quick whiff the entire city and its glory had come to him. Instead of being hundreds of smells, each one on its own, they were a blend. And right in the middle of this aromal feast was Stella’s own fragrance. She was so much a part of this city that he wondered if she wasn’t literally right—that on the day she died San Francisco would cease to exist.

As they neared the top Stella walked slower and then, only a few steps from the top she stopped and looked up. She raised her left hand and gestured toward the sky to draw Tony’s attention to the steel and glass canyon that surrounded them. From this one point the entire city appeared to be skyscrapers. These monuments of glass, reaching up to the heavens like some rebellious symbol of man, completely surrounded the two of them. From this vantage point, just below ground level, there were no trees, no cars. You didn’t even see the people walking by. All that was visible were giant fingers of human ingenuity reaching up and grabbing the heavens. Each building reflected the images of the ones across from it.

Stella stepped back to be beside him. She whispered to him. He had to strain to hear her. Her voice was reverent, intentionally sotto voce. “In the Dark Ages the Church built massive cathedrals to dwarf anyone who stepped inside,” she said. “The object was to make man feel insignificant and unimportant. The vast, echoing cathedrals were intended to destroy man’s spirit and make him into a worshipping, complacent, compliant servant. But this, this does not make man feel insignificant. You are looking at pure mind. It looks like glass and steel and concrete woven together in patches of architectural poetry but what it is, in its purest form, is man’s mind. Everything you see was once an idea in the head of one individual. One man said, ‘Let there be a monument’ and there was. Each one of these incredible buildings started inside the mind of someone and now they have a real existence. Never underestimate the power of ideas. Never underestimate what you are capable of doing.”

“Some say man has nothing that’s of any value. Unlike wild animals he has no claws. Yet his mind allows him to cut the hardest diamond. He was born without wings yet man alone, among all the creatures of earth, has set foot on the moon. He lacks the speed of the cheetah yet he can move beyond the sound barrier. What humankind had, that was different, was a mind that allowed them to conquer nature. And that’s why man has achieved the impossible.”

“Nature is not some divine mandate or commandments set in stone. It does not establish man’s limits at all. When we allowed nature to set the boundaries of human endeavor we were miserable creatures suffering horrible, short lives. But once we accepted that nature is the tool with which we create our lives then everything became possible. And it only became possible because of the use of our own minds. The moment you were born your eyes looked about, your nose sniffed the air, you tasted everything you could get hold of, you touched and felt. And all those sensations were accumulated in your brain and it started working wonders. The mind collected sensory data and turned it into concepts and ideas. And that was what made you uniquely and fully human. Your mind is the one tool of survival you have and with which all things are possible. Understanding the world around you allows you to achieve that which you call ‘your life’. It is what is necessary for you to do the most sacred thing one man can achieve—find your own happiness.”

Tony’s mind was racing. He listened and understood what she was speaking about. And he regretted so much. He regretted the books he didn’t read; the discussions he didn’t have; the ideas he didn’t contemplate. And he wished. He wished that some teacher had said these things to him long before now. He wished he could go back and do it over again. He now wanted to embrace every thought, to explore it fully, to caress it and contemplate it. He wanted to do something that he had never wanted to do before: he wanted to think.

That young man inside the Imax cinema seemed to be saying precisely what I said through this fictional character. He was echoing my own thoughts, perhaps not as eloquently as this figment of my imagination, but none the less they were the same premise. I wanted to applaud his observation but simply smiled to myself instead.