Blue Danube Reflections

BLUE DANUBE REFLECTIONS by Wayne Dixon They say the Danube River isn’t really blue but looks like chocolate from all the mud and silt it carries. It is only blue when the sun is at the right angle and the blue sky is reflected on the water. I can verify that by experience. In all my photos the water is muddy in appearance, and I only remember seeing the river blue once, punctuated by mirrored fluffy white clouds on the water. Our trip itself through the Balkans remains a bit of a muddle in my mind, having passed through seven countries in a dozen or so days, getting off the riverboat here and there for an inland tour. Places and faces race by mostly from tour-bus windows. The barrage of tour guide facts are like pieces of a puzzle heaped together waiting for the larger picture, like truth, to emerge. That takes time and patience for bits to converge, and upon reflection, to convey more than passes by the eye. On the riverboat, ours is a frog’s eye view of the river and its banks as we cruise by. Our cabin is in the bottom of the boat at water level. Much of what we see is reflected reality of “castles and kings, and hundreds of things.” Things are things, philosophers say, and like histories, have the importance that we attach to them. We float by much of that history, much of it eclipsed by more recent events. You would think World War II never happened as we have heard the guides narrate the modern struggle to free themselves from Russian Communism, once hailed as liberators form Nazism. We are shown bombed buildings but they are from Kosovo’s war. I first learned of the war of Kosovo from President Clinton’s speech at our Abraham Lincoln School in Selma, California. He was running for office again, landing in his helicopter, kicking off his campaign with issues far away in the Balkans. I had taken his picture, shaken his hand, and now here I am in the land of Kosovo, staring out the bus window at bombed out buildings, taking pictures again. What we bring on board beside our baggage, what we take from our journey, and what we add to it after the trip, refocuses on the significance of what we’ve seen more than forgotten facts. It is not the details I recall, but I feel it is the river I have come to know, moving on, day by day, as our version of “The African Queen.” Now and then, reflections, like memories, come and go, shimmering momentarily on the water, and then vanishing. History parades before us like art, impressionistic in nature, giving us glimpses of what was, what is, and what might be. We are like Alice in Wonderland, looking through the looking glass, or as St. Paul put it, looking through that glass darkly, waiting for face to face.