Crossroad Fahrenheit North
Momentum
Composition
12:15 min
Brooklyn, a cold sunny day. The East River banks are still covered with snow. On Manhattan Bridge a subway is approaching.
a traveller is thinking of another windy morning on the Bosporus shore, of the small cafe beside the jetty where he used to wait for the ferry to Üsküdar. And of the backgammon players who had set up the tables in a circle around the stove.
While unfolding the map upon his knees, sand trickles down on the young woman's lap sitting beside him. She interrupts the conversation she's having with a woman friend and looks at him, wondering, but his excuse is drowned by the subway's squealing. It's the squealing of the Parisian Metro in the bend after the Quai de la Rapée.
Is it sand trickling down from the sandals of men that are performing a ritual song and hurrying towards the tombs in the Valley of Falcons ?
Or is it dust from the sepulchral tower of Zeynel Bey on the banks of the Tigris ?
The children's voices are still lingering in his ears as well as the blind man's voice in the Istiklal Caddesi in Istanbul.
A Navajo carpet is being sold at auction in the school of Crown Point.
A horse-drawn carriage is crossing the square in front of the Alcazar in Sevilla and the cathedral's bells begin to chime.
On a quiet summer evening, the traveller remembers, he had had a walk with a woman friend on the shore of Eckernförde, she was pushing her bicycle, and her laughter had been flawless.
In Malta, a mortar's thunderclap is rolling through the Fjords of the Grand Harbour and glacial rain is transforming the trees in the Aarhus palace-garden into frozen tinkling silhouettes.
Having brushed the sand off her dress, the young woman beside him has it trickle into his open hand.
"Dorothea-Schlegel-Platz", she says.
"Berlin, South Exit,
Friedrichstraße Station.
On a clear cold day like this. We had travelled together, enjoying our conversation. At the moment of farewell, you gave me a present, a little box made of ebony. Inside there were the birds' calls in the foggy mountain forest of the Montagne d'Ambre and a whiff of the Emerald Sea at the northern tip of Madagascar. What are you doing in New York ?"
Video (coming soon)
... a reaction from outer space to the Golden Record "Sounds of Earth" aboard the spacecrafts "Voyager 1" and Voyager 2", launched in 1977 from Cap Canaveral.