(Mis)understanding

    The word "mis-" can be a bit of a misnomer when tagged onto another word as if an old but polite gentlemen was flagging down a young lady by calling out "Miss.  Oh Miss."  But throw "mis" onto certain words and it can create several definitions; misunderstanding someone could mean that you perhaps incorrectly interpreted what you heard, while a misunderstanding could mean a total lack of comprehension, just as the word misleading could come to mean either an unintended distraction or a purposeful one.  Visiting a new country is not much different, the directional signage different or nonexistant and the meanings of them changing with the times.  A brief piece in The New Yorker wrote: The English alphabet used to have five more letters, including "thorn," which represented a "th"-like sound and fell out offavor when printers such as William Caxton ("The Canterbury Tales") started leaving it out.  From engraved scribes to the Mayan logograms (where signs = words) and syllabograms (where signs = syllables), the article continued: Illuminaing a manuscript seems signifigantly easier than operating a Double Pigeon, a Chinese typewriter that required the typist to recognize two thousand different metal character blocks...Erdman (Michael Erdman, one of the curators of the recent exhibit on the history of writing at the British Library and the subject of the article) doesn't think that handwriting will ever disappear; there's too much the hand can do that the keyboard can't.   All that said as I type away on a keyboard high in the sky.

    Of course landing at a new or unfamilar airport can seem daunting for many with the exception of the frequent business traveler or the adaptable young,  But while my wife and I had been at Heathrow before and had somehow navigated the long corridors to madly dash to the bus station where the bus left for Gatwick in less than 30 minutes, this time seemed a bit different.  A different teminal, different signage, different levels of sleep or aching muscles, and also I was a year or two older.  Where the heck was the walkway to Terminal 2?  Follow the sign to Connecting Flights we were told incorrectly for the pathway shuffled us down to another level to a waiting bus, a level in which once you were off the plane there was no going back.  Through arrivals (or immigration) we went and before long we were there...in baggage claim.  Now, there was absolutely no chance to make our connection, not with the daunting prospect of again having the no-nonsense security to go through (airport police on the sidewalk outside Heathrow openly carry assault rifles with their fingers on the triggers, their bodies as heavily padded as SWAT team members).  So, where do we go now we asked, for Terminal 2?  We stopped a yellow-vested employee who told us to head out the nearest door and down the lift (wrong, that was the parking lot); we came back in and asked a limo driver with a sign being held to flag his passenger; down that door and make a left he told us somewhat hesitantly (wrong again as it led to the buses and taxis).  We looked all over the airport for signs but none could be found or none that we could see (it seemed to us from the signs that were visible hinted that Heathrow would much rather you catch their shuttles than use the walkways which we found are both faster and thus more crowded).  Then finally an agent getting off of work set us straight; all international flights MUST come off and go back through security if connecting to a domestic (in this case, European) flight.  Just through that door he pointed with a smile.  Look up at the camera...

View from the upper deck of the bus, the trees trimmed to give way

both on the sides and tops, forming a tunnel of sorts.

   lt was all a misunderstanding, probably made larger since we were nearing exhaustion from the long flight.  But we made it, connecting flight and all and were now safely ensconced in Cornwall, semi-stunned that the sun had defied all weather predictions and had chosen to appear for several days.  Hiking boots on, we boldly marched off to catch a bus for our usual circle of memory-lane hikes, smiling steadily at the bus driver who approached but appeared not to see us but stopped anyway...turns out, just standing there at a bus stop does nothing if you don't actually wave your hand out, he told us, otherwise the bus will just casually continue on past you without so much as a wink and a nod.  We jumped to the top deck to again be amazed at the square shaping of trees that form a live tunnel to accomodate the tall vehicles (trimming machines regularly come through the roadways, their blades whirring away at both the sides and tops of the trucks), none of which stops the jarring scraping sound that happens when the bus hits the branches that may have been missed or which grew back a bit too quickly).  From this viewpoint the tight single-lane roads that needed to be turned into as the buses made their way through less-traveled towns (at least by vacationers) seemed a bit precarious even for us but were always made with ease by the drivers.  And we also learned a few roadway rules, that the vehicle on the right always has priority, (something we discovered on entering a roundabout as straight through traffic had to stop to give way) and that distances and speed limits are marked in miles and not kilometers (7 means 7 miles on the roadway, but not on the hiking trails which can be marked in both).*  Temperatures are Celsius (forget the math calculation you thought you remembered from school on converting it to Farenheit; just use Google), and gas, milk and other liquids are marked in liters, as are food, produce and calories which are measured in kilos.  What we didn't figure out were the parking lots (cameras run 24/7 and capture your plate on entering and exiting; pay too little and the fine is generally £90-100).  If there's a barrier or gate at the exit, you pay when you leave; otherwise you pay when you enter (sometimes you aren't aware that you're even in a pay-to-park lot).  Pay at the machine, the small signs say, and enter your reg number; but there are no numbers on the stalls or the ground (my U.S. training).  The number that they want is your registration or car license plate number (to match their cameras).  It's somewhat misleading (a scam, my friend says, because they count on catching all the visitors like me with a surprise bill since most parking lots are privately owned and are indeed money-makers).  Ah, another great part of American capitalism brought back to the homeland.

    As mentioned earlier, my wife's cousin and his wife have cerebral palsy although she deftly operates her motorized wheelchair with the accuracy of a race car driver, her husband (my wife's cousin) walking behind her as if he would tip over at any moment but actually is well in control (on a side note, he has a Masters degree in ancient histories and has been a government processing supervisor for 30 years, both of which pale when compared to his sense of humor).  But it was as I walked behind her rather weighty chair (the batteries on the chair can power the vehicle for 25 miles) that I noticed that the scenery we all take for granted only came to her when she had a place to stop, her eyes having to constantly look ahead for people approaching or for an upcoming dip in the sidewalk or the drop off of a sudden curb.  But people were generous to a fault, making room as we scooted along, paying little attention to the wheelchair or her husband brightly making his way, a smile on his face as if ready to tell me another of his humorous observations.  "If I had a fairy wand and could make us both walk normally, I'm not sure I would do it," he told me, "because it wouldn't be who I am.  You have to be comfortable with what you have and who you are because there's little you can do about it."  He took care of his elderly parents for two years by himself before they passed away despite having other family nearby, and his wife's family life was even worse.  And yet you would never suspect a thing since pretty much all we did was eat and laugh.  Talk about humbling...

    I bring some of this up because I'm not sure what happens in such cases, the distance that comes to some families and relationships regardless of wealth or fame as witnessed in the lives of John Lennon and Elton John, or even more so, that which was shown in the documentary Life in the Doghouse.  Couples and friends and families fight and squabble and soon a judge allows the ruling to proceed with their self-imposed judgement of "irreconcilable differences."  Where were the signs we say, and find that they were everywhere.  So said sixteen-year old Greta Thunberg as she addressed the United Nations, adding her memorable "How Dare You!" comment to the UN's own report which noted that our oceans were heating up and becoming more acidic and that it was due to us humans.  Our President's response: She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.  Other followers of his were not so subdued, one calling the teen who has Asperger's syndrome a "mentally ill Swedish child."  Almost as if she were the only adult in the room, she had earlier told the U.S. Congress: I am grateful for being with you here in the USA.  A nation that, to many people, is the country of dreams.  I also have a dream... I have a dream that the people in power, as well as the media, start treating this crisis like the existential emergency it is.   And yet, wherever I go I seem to be surrounded by fairytales.  Business leaders, elected officials all across the political spectrum spending their time making up and telling bedtime stories that soothe us, that make us go back to sleep.  These are “feel-good” stories about how we are going to fix everything.  How wonderful everything is going to be when we have “solved” everything.  But the problem we are facing is not that we lack the ability to dream, or to imagine a better world.  The problem now is that we need to wake up.  It’s time to face the reality, the facts, the science.  Stop telling people that everything will be fine when in fact, as it looks now, it won’t be very fine.  This is not something you can package and sell or ”like” on social media.  Stop pretending that you, your business idea, your political party or plan will solve everything.  We must realise that we don’t have all the solutions yet.  Far from it...But you must not spend all of your time dreaming, or see this as some political fight to win.  And you must not gamble your children’s future on the flip of a coin...You must take action. You must do the impossible.  Because giving up can never ever be an option.

      Miscommunication?  Misinterpretation?  Misunderstanding?  Perhaps it was as simple as just listening and hearing again, or taking another view, or asking for a bit more of an explanation.  Perhaps at the airport or the parking lot I just needed to slow down and not get so excited.  Perhaps I needed to understand patience, just as my wife's cousin and his wife were displaying without a thought.  Perhaps as sixteen-year old Greta Thunberg would say, all the signs were there.  And perhaps then, and only then --especially after watching the excellent and spectacular Disney documentary, Oceans, which not only harbors life but brings us life, and then realizing that the film was filmed nearly a decade ago and wondering what would there be in our oceans if they filmed it  now-- perhaps then I would swallow my presumptions and begin to hear the coastal waters of the Cornish waves crashing against the cliffs with a voice echoing a young teen at the United Nations saying, "How dare you."

*England is the only country in Europe which still uses miles and not kilometers, perhaps best explained by this gentlemen writing in to an online forum: The Romans brought the concept of the mile to Britain, and we're not going to drop it just because they left 1500 years ago.  It's too soon.  We don't like sudden changes.  Also, the kilometer was invented by Napoleon and imposed upon the rest of Europe with fire and sword.  We beat Napoleon, so we're not having any of that rubbish here.  Apparently, at least to that gentleman, making the change to a new monetary system was difficult enough (in the old system 12 pence equalled a shilling, 20 shillings equalled a pound, and 21 shillings equalled a guinea).