Chance Encounter

About an hour and a half into my walk yesterday, as I was melting in the 34 degree Celcius (~95 F) heat, I saw a fellow traveler heading towards me.  Moving out on to the bike lane to keep our social distance, I looked at him and smiled.  He smiled back.  Then he said something to me.

At this point I had to take off my earphones to hear him.  Still keeping our distance (I'm guessing we were ten feet apart at this point), we both stopped.  He was just making small talk.  "Hot enough for ya?"  that sort of thing.  Nice chap.  Young.  Like my sons' age.   Well, we ended up chatting for maybe ten minutes.  He was 27, graduated from UOttawa last year with a degree in business (he must have started late), and so on.

The conversation was not enlightening, but humans need that, don't we?  We are social animals.  So sometimes even total strangers can bring "social" back into our lives.  And I realized something in the process.  Polonius was right.  "Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment," he had said to Laertes.  Sometimes, the little act of stopping to listen to what someone wants to talk about makes the world a better place. And that second part, don't you agree that the world would be much better place if we do "reserve thy judgment"?  Shakespeare's my hero, folks, as you well know.

The stranger?  I didn't even know his name.  Chances are I will never see him again, nor he me.  But in these times of isolation, it was ten minutes well spent.  We are all in this together, aren't we?

Anyway, that train of thought got me into a literary frame of mind.  Later in the evening I was reminded of one my favourite poems.  Something by Auden, of course (as you may ALSO know, Auden's my favourite poet).  Appropriately, it's titled "As I Walked Out One Evening."  Well, my chance encounter didn't happen in the evening, but you get the picture.

If you are interested in the poem in its entirety, I encourage you to look it up.  It's a very good one, and hugely meaningful.  But I would like to quote a few lines from the latter part of the poem for you, as follows:

'O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on.

I first read this poem when I was 16, and to this day it remains one of my all time favourites. You really need to read the whole thing, but even these last few lines they resonate so much with me.  And it's not just before I am entering this period of "late, late in the evening."  It resonated with me when I was 16.

Anyway, so much for these voices of rumination.  Time to begin another routinized and listless day.  And the deep river runs on.