I rode the subway to work yesterday chatting with an acquaintance I'd run into, a man with a quality of calm and careful depth. He began to tell me his plans for retirement which is about 20 years off, plans which include finding a perch somewhere along the East River, possibly near Water Street, from which to watch tugboats. How many happy tugboats are there out there, contentedly supporting their dependents and finding quiet, passionate succor to nourish the heart after the day's labor? This man told me that recently the roof had fallen in at his office, which was on the top floor of an 18 story building in Manhattan. Luckily those with cubicles underneath had just stepped away before the collapse, which revealed a patch of blue sky to the stunned IT professionals happy for their close escape.
Waiting for the freight elevator at work I got a lesson in Hindi from Lime, whose real name is Navindra, (father of Ravindra, brother of Davindra, uncle to Avindra, cousin of Rajindra, and so on. Really.) but who's been called Lime since childhood in Guyana, where "to lime" means to come on to a girl. His last name is Komar, which means love, I understand, so his name translates as Flirt Love. He told me two other Hindi words for love, pyar and ish. I'm glad the man's so talkative, or else I would never have learned so many words for love while waiting for the freight elevator on this sultry day in December. A day so warm, there's a chance the whole city is feeling a little ishish tonight.
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And "Harry Lime" is the rogue in The Third Man who says: "In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
What an acrid rogue! Reminds me of Someone.
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