Meditations On Meaning

I’d been writing at a cafe in Venice for hours when a cute woman with short black hair and dimpled cheeks sat at a table across from me, pulled out a sketch book, looked in my direction, rolled her eyes, smiled, and started sketching.

I wrote. For hours. And she sketched. For hours. And periodically we’d look at each other and smile. Then I found my way back to my writing. And she found her way back to her sketching. And I thought nothing more of the experience of her in my world than I do the experience of background music, people passing by on the streets, or clouds floating overhead.

Fate intervened as it usually does. And her left elbow pushed a just-finished sketch onto the floor. I was distracted by the fluttering paper in my visual field. So I looked away from whatever I was writing, and toward the sketch now lying on the floor. It was a picture of… me!

“Is that…?” I asked, as I slowly pointed a finger in my own direction. She smiled and gestured for me to come to her table. I stood up and walked over. She pushed her other sketches my way. They depicted dozens of people. Some of whom were sitting around us. And others must have been customers who’d come in, ordered, and left.

She smiled and said, “Sometimes I wish that I could just capture all the world’s beauty. But I can’t. So I think that instead, I’m going to live trying.”

I wanted to tell her that she’s already captured all of it. That every moment is as beautiful as it can be. As is every sketch. And every person. Because moments and sketches and people are alike in that they contain all beauty. But words are just an approximation. So instead of telling her anything, I just smiled.

She laughed and said that she could read my mind. I asked if she believed whatever it was that she read in my mind. “It’s not a question of believing,” she said. ‘It’s just reading. Or sketching or writing or being. That’s what you’d probably say anyway. And I think I agree. Do you?”

I smiled again. “Where did you come from?” I asked.