The story of that.
By Contretemps
The strange thing about a room is that it can be moved without any of the chairs changing position.
You sit where you always sat. The table is familiar. The work is still on the surface between you and me. Even the voice across from you may sound the same. But something has altered in the walls, in the path by which one arrives, in the invisible jurisdiction of the place.
This is one way arrangements announce themselves: not by breaking intimacy, but by relocating it.
I would not know how to write an obtuse, repetitive statement about meeting extraordinary people in a foreign country. Some countries keep their laws in the open and their etiquette in the walls. The posted rule is one thing. The real rule is whether you knew not to ask.
Do not put powdered cheese on seafood.
Why ever not?
Because the fish is delicate, sir. Because taste has its own order of protection. Because civilization, among its many crimes and mercies, sometimes pauses long enough to defend a fish from a tourist. Some civilizations turn tables, other rent them for the entire evening. Sometimes the waiter is a server, other times the server is a circuit of sorrows.
Real pizzerias open only for dinner. The waiter vanishes until summoned. If you ask for the bill too soon, you are not concluding a transaction. You are ending the relationship.
Arno or Duomo, my dear. That is the question. Water or cathedral. Current or stone. The city moving under its bridges, or the city pretending heaven can be reached by arranging weight correctly.
I would not know.
I have always been more visual than sensorial.
And also blind.
This is not a contradiction so much as an indictment. Sighted people imagine vision as possession: the eye arrives, the object yields, the world becomes available. But much of what matters is not visible even to those who see. Etiquette is invisible. Permission is invisible. The true shape of a room is invisible until someone tells you which door you were not meant to use. The story is not written in either invisible ink or blank space. That which defines our attitudes also defines our mien. This is the story of "That" - an unspoken agreement the neither unified nor delineated.
A cathedral can be seen and still not understood. Or can be seen but not smelled. A river can be heard and still not followed. A person can be met many times before the arrangement that contains them becomes legible.
