Chance Encounters

In Oxford I met a woman and her little boy at the youth hostel. He was excitable and talkative; she had the tentative and on-the-edge look of a wild deer in a public park. They spoke Hebrew - she said she supposed we were Christians - her son said he is interested in guns, bombs and "especially war, because I live in Israel and will probably be killed."

"Where are you headed?" I asked, making conversation.

She looked away. "I will ask God where we should go next," she whispered.

"Boom! Rat-tat-tat-tat!" said her son. (2007)


In the launderette at Warwick I met a little, tough-looking woman from the South Island of New Zealand who was here on a sort of memorial pilgrimage for her husband, who died last year. "We promised each other that whoever was left would go back to England. As he was dying he told me to visit the museums and the cathedrals." She had iron-gray hair, coke-bottle bottom glasses, and buck teeth. "Traveling alone is very difficult," she said, in response to my question. "I miss him terribly. But I missed him terribly and it was very difficult at home as well, so I decided to come anyway."

I saw her again at Stratford, but she was shy of me--maybe she thought she had shared too much. (2007)


In Oxford I sat on a bench on Broad Street next to a man who was drawing the buildings across the road. He nodded and smiled but didn't speak until a delivery van pulled up in front of us. "Oh, no," he said. "Well, it'll be gone soon. This is a no parking zone." (And it was). The man said he was retired from teaching art at one of the colleges and now did whatever he liked. "My wife's still working, so she supports me," he said, and laughed.

I said, "It doesn't much look like you've retired if you're still drawing."

"It's not work if you choose it," he said. John came over and sat by me, and told him about our travels with the students.

"I've taken groups of students to London just for the day," the artist said. "What you're doing, that's work." (2007)