[SPOKEN]: 4:2
2nd Movement
Confession: "Wandering"/
"Il Pleut Dans Mon Coeur""Wandering 'midst empty shells of men;
Reaching out, though souls dwell not within.
"Searching for God's grace to assuage my unbelief;
Spurned by persons cold who live in shades of grief.
"Now I feel the world turn into ice;
Faith is dear—no will pay the price."
"Il pleure dans mon coeur, comme il pleure sur la ville. Quelle est cette
Languere qui penetre mon couer? O bruit doux de la pluie, par terre
Et sur le toit, pour un coeur qui s'enuie, o le chant de la pluie.
"Il pleure sans raison dans ce coeur qui s'ecoeure. Qoi? Nulle
Traison? Ce deuil est sans raison. C'est bien le pire peine,
De ne savoir pourquoi. Sans amour et sans haine,
Mon couer a tant de pein.
"There is weeping in my heart, like the soft and gentle
Rain in the air. Would that I could know the cause of
My despair. Somehow, Somewhere
"The void will be filled, warmth and tenderness
And grace I have willed. And my spirit then will
Soar to the sky, for I shall be fulfilled....
"Il pleut sans raison dans ce coeur qui s'ecoeure...
...mon couer a tant de pein."
Kyrie: "Kyrie Elison"
"Kyrie, O Lord, have mercy (eleison);
Christe, O Christ, have mercy (eleison);
Kyrie, O Lord, have mercy.
"Pacem, pacem, pacem."
Readings / Response: "God Is the Word"/
"Songs of Micah" / "God Is the Word""God is the Word,
And the Word is the seed in the garden;
Plant the seed.
"Nurture the seed
So that goodness may grow in the garden;
Nurture the seed."
"And many nations shall go, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths;[SUNG]:
"For the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem."[SPOKEN]: :3
"And he shall judge among many peoples and rebuke strong nations afar off;"[SUNG]:
"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."[SPOKEN]: 6:6
"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God: shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?[SUNG]:
:7 "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sins of my soul?
:8 "He hath shown thee, O man, what is good;
"And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
Gospel: "I Spake"/
"Trois Miniatures" (instrumentals)"When I was a man, I spake as a man,
I understood as a man, I thought as a man;
"But when I became a child,
I put away mannish things."
Act II
"Bonjour, mama," I called as I came into the kitchen. I've got to practice my French if I'm to accompany her to the Université de Guadalajarre this summer. Mexican French isn't Parisian French but it's a hell of a lot cheaper. I can still afford to go to San Diego State in the fall and begin my studies for a secondary teacher's credential in earnest. Living in Mexico for nine months gave me a good start but just a start.
All of which, of course, is rationalization for a six-week party in Guadalajarre before the grind begins. Pretty soon we're chattering away in Frenglish. Only a month to go.
So here I am, sitting in a place called Café de la Paix, scuffing my tennies on the cobblestone patio and looking over the terra cotta roofs at the Sea of Cortez harbor of Topolobampo. Brilliant blue jellyfish swarm the waters of the cove below this Mediterranean-looking, terraced fishing village. And I'm minding my own business, really. Munching some pain duoce and sipping Mexican chocolate, reading Jules Verne in the original French. It's good practice though I've already read it several times in English.
It was tough talking my mom into letting me travel with some buddies I met in Guadalajarre, even if it was to the Copper Canyon. Talk about spectacular! Several Grand Canyons would fit in it with room left over. One of my friends was an adult already, it was a popular tour, completely safe. And besides, I only needed to remind her that she bicycled through Europe in '39, just before LeNoir, may his soul rot in hell, began his march on Germany. This looked to be boring in comparison.
Then, of course, when we got to Los Mochis the train was to be delayed for a couple of days so, hey, there's this great little village just a couple of hours away by bus. My buddies are sleeping off a hangover and I'm reading Verne for breakfast and an odd-looking man is walking over to a table and notices me. He stumbles, catches his balance and stands, staring. I can barely hear his whisper from across the way.
"Who are you?"
The scenery is hard to ignore as the train crawls along the rim of a chasm that truly dwarfs our own puny Canyon. But I can't exorcise him from my mind. His words constantly haunt me, speaking of a universe that never happened, one that almost did. He looked at me is if I knew him, as if I were in fact relentlessly dogging his footsteps. Across the aisle the forest rolls by....
"I really don't know you. Am I supposed to?"
"Please. I'm sorry, I mean..."
He hesitated. I had no idea what to say so for lack a better plan I just waited. He tried again.
"It wasn't supposed to happen." He spoke half to me, half to something over my shoulder. "I got back and it was all wrong. LeNoir won, for godssake." A better riposter than I would have remarked, 'Certainly not for God's sake.' Of course he won. Europe's got twenty years of Fascist rule to show for it. "But he wasn't supposed to," he continued. "We defeated him."
He wasn't really talking to me, was he? Just sort of bouncing the sounds off of me, maybe to hear them more clearly himself.
At this point my poorer judgement got the better of me.
"What you mean we, Kimo Sabe. If I remember my history correctly we were too busy fighting off the Confeds to be of much help. Not that we could have done much good anyway. It's tough to fight the Confeds and France and Japan and South Africa all at the same time. Diamonds buy a hell of a lot of planes and tanks and guns."
"But I didn't do anything. I went back, just like you told me to. And it was all different. More than two million Jews were killed."
"Yeah, six million more, to be approximate."
This was getting a bit weird. I never told him anything, never even met him before.
Suddenly, it was like a film just lifted from his eyes. He spoke clearly, firmly.
"Daniel, you like science fiction, don't you."
I don't remember telling him my name but I was already a little confused anyway.
"Yeah."
"Just give me a moment to compose this. I'm going to tell you a story. You may not remember me but the last time we spoke you said we would meet again, but in 1959..."
We spoke for hours as he wove the most fantastic tale and when it was done he gave me seven pages from his journal, ones he claimed to have given me in a once before that never happened. They're in Hebrew, all right, but I know what they say.
He was on his way to La Paz. He started looking for answers in Puebla but it held no clues as to why the universe had changed so he continued on and the most natural land route took him through Topolobampo. As it turned out, that was to be his destination. I asked him if all this traveling around might not keep on changing things. He replied that he felt a stability now that he hadn't before, that he felt that things would be different before he had known. He had theories but they meant nothing now. He's no longer a scientist but a pilgrim now, a part of the landscape, an insignificant piece of flotsam on the jetstream of time.