You will want to reach across the table and brush the errant crumbs away from his lips. You have never touched his face. The possibility has slept at the back of your mind for the past four years. You wonder if possibility plays the same games with him. You fear that the answer is a resounding no, so instead you turn the conversation to weather, and the sudden outburst of rain.

Insight will come unbidden while wandering through the Great Lawn. You will think, "That is too much truth for a Monday afternoon."

You will drive by an almost deserted gas station on a side street, sandwiched between Cambridge homes and vacant storefronts. The clock reads 11:15. "US Petroleum" letters shine in fluorescent red and blue, fuel at $2.99 a gallon. As you turn, you spy an old man in a moss green sweater and turban shuffling in the shadows, waiting for customers to come. Your mind will take a mental picture of this moment. It is the saddest thing in the world.

You will find a surprise hidden in layers of wax paper and thin rope. A mistake shall be put to right. An old sin forgiven. You will look to the harbor and think of ships, soon to sail.

"Where is he now?", you will wonder as you stare at an old Barcelona photograph. Two black-clad figures walking opposite ways down a symmetrical cobblestone street. The only token left from your winter affair. Does he blink into the California sun and remember? Or are his days too filled with dried Turkish figs, French crepes, and a red-haired goddess from across the sea?

The characters on a torn scrap of paper will lead you past the skyscrapers and crowds of Shanghai into a gated, squat building. No one there will understand you. Glass cages filled with eels, cod, turtles and crab line the walls. You walk past tables, bewildered. The man in a black suit will point at a lobster. You will nod.

Do not sing over kitchen stoves. You should not even dare to hum. There are dwarves lurking underneath, elementals drawn to human song. They will want to whisk you away, braid your hair with their gnarled nimble hands. Though there are some advantages to living in a world without sun, it would be best to stay quiet.

Today the rain will tug at the pink blossoms from the spring trees and turn dirt highways into mud pools. The grey skies will remind you of the monsoons of your youth. You will curse this cold country that keeps you here while on an island that knows only wet and dry, your grandfather grows old and forgets.

Stop consuming the endless stream of chatter, images, text and sound bombarding you from metal boxes. There is no glory in trivia. Try your hand at creation. Why don't you start to live?

Perhaps it is time you discover what your mother kept in that blue china urn by the bed. The jade dragon that sits on top of it still remembers you, as a boy of twelve, chipping the end of its tail off with a stone you picked from the neighbor's garden.

You will watch two brilliant men argue the world. Calcutta and Bombay in one room. Religions and cultures overlapping in a country walled off by Hollywood and Walmart superstores. You will question why you decided to grow up without learning five languages too.