Day: February 17, 2020

As a part of the routine work, one of the projects involved setting up base in a nearby town for a week. While stopping by for a quick lunch at the cafe down street, the feeling of familiarity was strong. That sense of déjà vu was quite strong. It was while leaving the cafe, I had realized that among the group of ladies seated across my table was the classmate of my school days. Those were the days, years ago and seas apart, a world different when we were residing in states far away from the present. Thus realized, there was conformation of person, exchange of present news and in consequence numbers and details. If it were not for the pause, the old connection would never have been renewed.

“For a split second they stared at each other. A fleeting, lasting moment. One person noticing another person out of a whole crowd of strangers.” Alexandra Potter

Finding connections and meeting points, we being humans need the feeling of connectedness from time to time. In a room of strangers, we need the “pauses”, “spaces” as well as “sharing of joys and sorrows” from time to time. Though personal lines have to be drawn; occasional cross-over helps one to move through especially when in despair. Over time, one realizes that life is all the connectedness that we all weave around us. At times, to find ourselves back in he “happy place” all one needs to do is to reconnect and re-experience the best days of the yesteryear to recharge for the present.

“People are guests in our story, the same way we are guests in theirs. But we all meet each other for a reason because every person is a personal lesson waiting to be told.” Lauren Klarfeld

Meeting Point

Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):
Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;
The stream’s music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop
And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise—
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees:
Not caring if the markets crash
When they had forests such as these,
Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body’s peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.

By Louis MacNeice

(Source: The Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice (Oxford University Press, 1967)
Louis MacNeice, “Meeting Point” from The Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice. Copyright © 1967 by Louis MacNeice.)