Glory Ho

I noticed something when i was in London this past July.

For years, when traveling, I’d always hoped to find a face I knew. An old advertising professor in the Frankfurt airport. A kindergarten classmate on the Spanish Steps. I’d think of something clever to say, we’d chat briefly and then part, both lost again in the metropolitan common collage of expectations and emotions, backpacks and cobblestones.

But last time I was in London, not so. As we walked the Thames riverfront, fascinated by starving artist’s faces in the sand and perusing the used book market, (where I bought Veronica Decides to Die) I saw bits of everyone I know in others. That woman in the pea coat and paisley scarf-the soft cushion of her chin and nose reminds me a little bit of my Aunt Beth. That man there, he walks just like Dustin–with such urgency. The tanned shoulder of a Swiss tourist–it’s the exact shade of my Mother’s skin. A shade of coffee sprinkled with melting snow.

Instead of wishing it was them, I was simply glad to be reminded of them. I was appreciating what was there, intangibly on my table. A memory. A glimpse. A moment.

The feeling hit me again, from a different angle, in Mexico.

We were wandering the avenue, now overrun with high prices (is that pesos?) suburban mall windchimes, tequila trinkets and beaded belts that would look beautiful hanging in my closet for the next ten years. I was seriously considering some purple earring made of palm fronds when an art gallery caught our eye. My first thought: But we can’t buy anything. It’s just not in our budget right now. So why go in?

Why, to appreciate the art of course.

And so we did.