9889. SYMBOLS OF THE FUTURE

SYMBOLS OF THE FUTURE

Just while the running river ran out

my tongue-tied status was cleared and

I sat at the bench. We were eating, I can

recall, Pennsylvania-Dutch pretzels that 

were pretty good though too hard on my

teeth. I laughed at my joke about that

Greek orator, Demosthenes, practicing

speech with pebbles in his mouth. I said

it felt like that, with the pretzels.

-

You muttered, with a mouthful, how the

Greeks knew all the tricks. I said my 

simple yes, and we moved along. You

know symbols  -  of the future, that is  -

are never recognized at the moment they

become so. It's only years later when,

looking back, one realizes how everything

since has been built around that instant.

-

The sunning game  -  try getting a tan

in the fog. You know? We 'activate' the

symbol  -  the whatever it is  -  pretzels,

here, on a bench, and the Greeks  -  and

then we activate again, from that point on,

the parts of the psyche that were, and are

now, connected to them. Yes.

-

Anyway, I remember I could hardly hear you;

with the river running like that over the rocks.

There was quite a gurgling racket at the spot.

Where we sat. It's odd : You'd figure water

to be a silent thing, but oh can it make noise.