Small World (an act of fiction)
“What’s yore favorite ale?” I asked the Irishman.
“Ach, like I the (indescipherable), except on Friday’s when it’s (indescipherable)”.
I talked to his more sober friend, a younger man in his mid-30s whose hair was dark and had about him the manner of the manor. He explained that he liked to go to the States now & again. I asked whereabouts.
“I’ve been to New York, L.A., San Francisco. But my favorite city is Columbus, in Ohio”.
”I know where it is, I live there. How did you know I was from Columbus?”
“I didn’t!”
”Come on. Columbus can’t be your favorite city.”
“Why not? The sky is an azure hue between clouds that sit like pillows. There is a wonderous bronze statue of Christopher Columbus downtown. His jaw is set like a martial man, standing athwart history and yelling ‘Go!’. The Scioto river rushes like a colossus over the landscape, that great southern boundary that separates a Centre mall from “little Germany”. The city sits like a jewel in the middle of Cornfield, USA, a megapolis of ‘scrapers rising from the ground at sharp right-angles.”
“But plenty of cities rise out of cornfields at right-angles.”
“I don’t compare to Columbus to Kansas City or Sacramento. I compare her to the cities near the Yangtzee in 17th century China. Of course I’ve never been to China or lived in the 1600s, but I’ve seen pictures in Nat’l Geographic. If you compare fair Columbus to 17th century China, she looks positively other-worldly.”
“How is it that you chose China to compare her to?”
“China, schmina. You’re missing the point completely. Think not as man thinks but God. You measure everything, set up elaborate hierarchical models…you want to know if Ted Williams was a better hitter than Lou Gehrig and why. You’d date Jennifer Lopez and study her toenails and wonder if they are as fine as Sandra Bullock’s.”
“I would be happy with either Ms. Lopez’s toenails or Sandra F. Bullock's, thank you very much.”
”Ha, you say that now. It’s to the extent you see, you do not see. You look at Columbus, and Bullock, with your eyes, and jaundiced eyes at that. Sophistication is the paintin’ that learning puts on tin structures. Still tin underneath, like the lean-to I lived in outside Boone, North Carolina. Split an oak to put shingles on it; still tin underneath. Get it?”
“I think so.”
“The radical thing is divine innocence. God’s not parceling his love out based on the latest numbers manufactured by angels in the Division of Statistics. Yes, the hairs on your head are counted but that’s a different Bureau and is completely independent of the Quantity of Love Committee.”
“Since you brought up the subject of God, did not Jesus love John the most?”
“Yes, but that was with his human nature. Two natures, remember?”
“So what does all this have to do with the price of tea in 17th century China?”
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