Author and Artist
Lost and Found
A fictional travelogue; three minute read.
I’m living in a world filled with people using a different map from me. Either they’re lost—or I am.
I’ve just come from the Globe Museum. The rooms full of orbs dating to the sixteenth century anchor me in the realities of my life.
Wherever I am in the world, I can only be in one place at a time. I am, inescapably, a world citizen. And, what I understand about the world depends on where I stand in it. My passport is not a passport to wisdom. It merely marks the point of departure, the start of a journey.
I’m navigating towards Vienna’s Belvedere Palace. During Hapsburg times, it was one of the first public art museums in the world. A small lesson from history on opening minds.
A voice interrupts my guidebook reading. A grizzled, dyspeptic man behind a Flat-Earth Society table is imploring me with the fevered diction of a proselytizing missionary.
“Sir, sir, a moment of your time. See the horizon. It’s a straight line. The earth is flat. NASA photos are government lies.”
I’ve cruised the Amazon, attended theater in London’s West End, watched llamas graze on Machu Picchu, set foot on every continent. This is the first time a flat-earther has gotten in my ear.
His zealotry charms me. I can’t bear to break his monologue. Hard not to respect a man who’s passionate in his beliefs.
In our own ways, we’re both teachers. My classroom is inside a high school. His is outdoors on a sidewalk.
Noting the hesitant pause in my step, he says, “You dress like an American.”
“You Americans have travel blindness.” I sense a tirade coming. “Americans don’t deserve passports.”
“You come to my country to turn your tourist dollars into selfies in front of our monuments, you buy tacky souvenirs from tacky tourist shops and you eat in restaurants serving the same food you get back home in your Denny’s.” His deep-set, brown eyes blaze.
“You miss the truth of Vienna.” I wonder how much this flat-earther and I mirror each other.
Whatever he’s getting at, I have to wonder if he’s ever bothered to visit the Globe Museum. Somewhat petulantly, I consider inviting him to join me there, but don’t.
“After 600 years of rule, Austria lost our Hapsburg empire, but that’s in the past.” I start to tell him that educated Greeks—also in the past—figured out the world was round in the third century B.C., but he’s unstoppable.
“There’s more to Austria than medieval castles, Gothic cathedrals and strudel,” he charges.
“You Americans go everywhere and learn nothing. You don’t see our free health insurance. You don’t see that we are free of gun violence.” The breeze in my face isn’t enough to cool my burning cheeks.
“Americans can’t even count very well. Only three nations don’t use the metric system—Liberia, Myanmar and yours.” I wince.
I don’t argue with him. My feet hurt, and I’m in need of a pee. A pastry too.
Like most ill-informed people, he doesn’t know it. He’s entitled to his ignorance. So too are the American tourists who don’t see what they can’t sightsee. So am I.
Maybe the flat-earther and I are not so different.
No one starts out perfect.
