Back in France, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

Our frequent commentator on human affairs, Terry Field of both Florida and France, has returned to his chateau in Normandy.  While in transport from Ft. Lauderdale on a luxury cruise ship, he began to write.  Here is the first of his musings.  - GNH

A Note on Board

by Terry Field

Well, six months passes with the certain pace that time spent in an ageing frame allows to be experienced.

My ‘publisher’ has suggested that I pen a note on my thoughts and experiences of the last few months spent in balmy climes, far south of the rigors of the melting arctic and its revenge on Europe. This was an unwelcome task since I was and am in a dolorous frame of mind, and dwelling upon the reasons is not to be relished. Yet the task is done, and the offering made in this little series of notes by way of observation and occasional conclusion.

As things are now

I am floating like wobbling jelly across a still-warm sea between Florida and the Azores, aboard a gigantic American cruise ship. On the top deck, defying appropriateness is a lawn – not astra-turf – a real lawn, and upon it a white heron has landed, and stands uncertainly. I have seen her follow the ship, circling and keening for a home now irretrievably lost.   She is a Floridian; pure and fine, snowy white, yellow-beaked, feather-tailed, tall and erect on long black legs and broad feet. She is plainly very tired; wings drop immediately on landing and she walks uncertainly as the ship sways.

Below, on land and not sea, Terry photographs 

an avian species at his Florida home.

I approach a steward ‘ Have you any fish? Uncooked?’

‘Yes sir, sea bass or bream?’

‘The heron will not care; sea bass may be better’.

The fish duly arrives, sliced on a platter. I offer the bird some small pieces, dropping them on the lawn in front of the bird. She looks uncertain, moves forward, pecks at the fish with a rapier-like beak, but leaves it alone. The bird seems perplexed, but beyond eating. I suspect she has not eaten for five days and therefore has not taken fluids. Time is running out for her.

Her world has disappeared, hidden by the horizon; she is alone, landed in a place only made for men. For her, the lawn constitutes a fraud; she expects to drive her beak deep and retrieve a beetle or grub, yet one inch down is the steel plate of the deck.

Most people mill around, uncomprehending. This bird’s life is ebbing away yet none seem to see it.

I do not expect to see her alive this time tomorrow.

I am struck that we are doing a similar thing on a broader canvas. To ourselves. We travel both individually and as a species far from the time and condition of our points of origin, from the world that we were made by and for. 

Like this white heron, we travel out of sight of where we knew we could be ourselves, where everything was just right for our needs, before we discovered the thought and language of ‘wants’.

Now we are all in a strange world, made by us, yet not in any sense one that really meets our ‘needs’.

All reports suggest that we will soon find ourselves in a world as harsh and unsupportive of us as the heron found the turf on the top deck of this cruise ship.

Perhaps you caught that the last sentence refers to climate change on going around this fragile planet.  

Next article, Terry approaches a Parisian tailor and realizes he is back in France! - GNH