The morning was one of those that arrive with a sense of divine instruction. The Universe, speaking in the language of blue skies and a light southerly breeze off the lagoon, said plainly: Come out of the house, Genome, and be among my people.
It seemed an odd phrasing but, as someone once said in a previous century, ours is not to question but to obey. Shakespeare perhaps?
I obeyed by ankled down to Brunswick lagoon, the one with the gazebo, not the fountain. A great blue heron stood motionless in the shallows with the serenity of a monk who has achieved enlightenment and no longer requires breakfast.
Two Mockingbirds conducted a bilateral summit in the Live Oaks. Somewhere behind me, a dog was offering its unsolicited opinion about, what I presumed was squirrel business.
It was the kind of morning that seems to have had me in mind when the new day dawned.
And then I noticed someone coming toward me on the path. He was of a certain target demographic age, purposeful in his stride, wearing the expression of a man who has recently come to a decision and feels quite happy about it. As he drew closer, he looked up. His eyes met mine. His face broke into a wide, warm smile.
"Hey!" he said. "Here he is!"
Well, I ask you.What was I supposed to do? I’m not made of stone. The man was smiling at me and had announced our meeting as though he’d been looking forward to the moment for some time.
"Good morning!" I said, matching his energy and perhaps raising it slightly. "Wonderful day, isn't it?
He didn’t slow down and strode on past me as though I were the idle wind.
"No, no," he continued, gesturing broadly, "I told you already, the eleven o'clock doesn't work for me."
I noticed, as he passed within arm's reach, the small white capsule lodged in his left ear, trailing a wire so fine it was nearly invisible in the morning light.
I processed this. I recalibrated. He was not talking to me. He had never been talking to me.
That ‘Here he is’ remark was intended for someone on the other end of a telephone call, someone who apparently was hoping for an eleven o'clock appointment; someone, decidedly, not me.
I watched him continue down the path, still talking, still gesturing, entirely unaware that he had just caused the internal clockwork to slip a gear in a man who had come out specifically to feel connected to the human race.
Well, said Amy, from somewhere in the vicinity of my left temple. That was something.
"Not a word, Amy" I said to that snarky little cluster of gray cells that serves as my limbic system.
I'm just saying, you really committed to it, didn’t you?
She seemed to be enjoying herself enormously.
"Anyone could have made that mistake," I said. "The man smiled and made direct eye contact with me. Mine was a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the available evidence."
She giggled when she said, I want to make sure I have this right. You said to him, ‘Beautiful day, isn’t it?’
I made no immediate reply, which she correctly identified as a victory and celebrated accordingly.
The heron had not moved. It occurred to me that herons never have this problem. They simply stand quietly in the shallows, magnificent and unbothered, and let the world conduct its business at a safe distance.
Perhaps, I thought, the correct response to a world full of people talking to invisible companions is to become more heron-like.
I considered how the philosophy might be developed into something that could anchor a short TED Talk.
"Excuse me,” said a small voice.
I looked up. A woman with an expression of silver-haired wisdom, walking a small dog that appeared to be mostly ears, had stopped on the path. She was looking directly at me. Both ears were empty of electronic capsules. Her ears, I mean, not the dog’s.
"I couldn't help noticing," she said, nodding at the lagoon, "that heron has been standing in exactly the same spot for the past twenty minutes. I find it here every morning. Just thought you might find it interesting; you seem to be another admirer."
And there it was.
Not a grand revelation. Just a woman and a dog stopping to share a heron, the way people have always shared herons, when they happen to find themselves in the same place and time, paying attention.
"I did find it interesting," I said. "Very interesting."
She nodded, smiled and walked on. The dog looked back once, with the expression of a creature that thinks he’s seen it all and reckons it’s time to draft the memoir.
When I got home, Ms. Wonder was in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, wearing the expression she reserves for my return from a morning constitutional.
"How was the walk?" she asked.
"Instructive," I said, settling onto the stool at the counter,"I think the problem with modern life is not that people have stopped talking to each other. It's that they've made it difficult to tell who they're talking to."
She considered this with the focused attention she brings to all my announcements, however dubious their origins.
"Either that," she said, "or just maybe not everyone, smiling in your direction is making a personal connection."
"Wonder,” I said dispprovingly, “I am simply eager to engage with the world. I prefer to think of myself as enthusiastically available.”
She smiled and handed me a steaming cup of Jah’s mercy. It was, I noted with relief, the correct temperature.
Some days, that's all we need.
