(197): Fragments

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(197) is today: Thursday, 22 July 2010.

As the title suggests, this is, more than anything else, a bunch of unconnected points I've been wanting to mention.

--My host family has a grandson - I'd say he's about as old as this blog - who stays here at the house during the day. This little guy is the world's most boring baby. He never smiles and never laughs. He has these cheeks that make him look like he's hording a pair of golf balls the way squirrels horde nuts; he knows he can't swallow the damn things, but he doesn't want to spit them out either. The only thing he does that attracts any unique attention is cry. And he does this a considerable amount of the time. When people say that they don't want babies because they do nothing but cry and poop, this is the little dude they have in mind.

--Classes aren't as fun when all you do that week are standardized prep exercises for a French proficiency exam you aren't signed up to take.

--Last night, I went to hear the soft, soothing, yet oddly syncopated music of trio Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette.

--No idea why, but I was craving a Sprite afterward.

--Tonight I'm having a farewell dinner with the CEA group at a local restaurant, after which I'm going to see my last Jazz a Juan concert, featuring Kyle Eastwood (son of Clint) and Diana Krall. Not a bad sendoff on Europe's part, I would say.

--Last item doesn't really work well with the bullet point format, so I'm giving it paragraphs.

When I'm not lost in thought (rare, but it does happen), I tend to look up at the sky. I've done it since I was a kid. And, when I was younger, before I left the U.S./North America for the first time, there was one question I used to wonder. It went something like this: "Is the sky the same in other parts of the world? Like color and clouds and everything?"

The answer's obvious enough in an adult sense - yes - but when kids ask questions like these, the point isn't really to obtain the answer. Well, maybe that matters sometimes as well, but the real reason kids ask those sorts of questions is because finding the answer requires them to do stuff first. The things they have to do for their answers provide knowledge that is almost always more important than the answer itself.

But anyway, of course I'd occasionally see footage on TV or in a movie of natural landscapes in foreign countries. But I wouldn't believe those; this was a question whose answer I had to see for myself. And when I make it to other parts of the world, I look at the sky and am just floored by it for an instant... It's the same, but it's not the same... somehow.

My pithy analysis of the quest for answers better be right, because goodness knows that poor confused answer doesn't justify the effort to search for it.

Even when I got to France in January and the sky was snowy (just like Washington's was), or even when I landed in Marrakesh and the sky was clear blue (not unlike the mountainous western U.S.), I was still amazed.

I think it's because of this fascination with the sky that the following quote from Kingdom Hearts (which is the best video game ever made, as far as I'm concerned) really captures my imagination. I've thought of it a few times in the last several months:

"There are many worlds, but they share the same sky. One sky, one destiny."
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