Thursday, May 3, 2012

A Taste of the World

Another package!  He cradled the brown paper and string bound box in his arms, nodded his appreciation to the delivery man, and quickly closed his front door.  Glancing at the tiny rainbow colored squares of paper affixed to the upper right hand corner of the newly arrived parcel, he was inspired to exclaim to no one other than himself, “My goodness!  Just look at all those stamps!”

He carried the box over to his brown horsehair sofa, which waited for him within the protective seclusion of his living room, and  took a seat on the end nearest a bookcase carefully cluttered with a collection of objects from a host of foreign countries.  The entire scene was framed against walls covered with black and white photographs. Ocean liners, pagodas, the Eiffel Tower, startling white cliffs, the Golden Gate Bridge, the China Clipper.

Anticipation flowed from his fingertips as he carefully cut the string and tore away the paper. Lifting the flaps of tan cardboard, and peering inside, he felt a  rush of excitement as the secrets of the box were revealed.  A photograph of the Great Pyramids.   A small stone sphinx.  A jar of  sand.

“Egypt!” he exclaimed, like a school boy responding to a teacher’s question.

He stood up, creating a flutter of paper and string, and carried the box over to the large world globe near his front window.  A smaller, more manageable model of the world beyond his own insulated world. “Now let’s see, where exactly is Egypt?”  he queried  himself,  spinning the green and blue orb on it’s axis.

“Hats off to you, Michael!”  He praised his twin, the sender of the parcel.  “What a splendid journey it must have been!”   Michael. The adventurer.  Off traveling the world, while his own  fingertips traveled  from Cairo to Giza, Giza to Alexandria, right here in his living room. 

Lifting the jar of sand as he set the box down, he carefully removed the lid, and poured a few grains into his palm, and imagined how hot the desert must be this time of day.

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