THE PRELUDE & ACT I -- Rendezvous at the Railroad

The Prelude (https://montaguewhitsel-4friends.blogspot.com/2026/06/prelude.html)  and Act I  (https://montaguewhitsel-4friends.blogspot.com/2026/06/act-i-rendezvous-at-railroad.html) are now posted.

 The railroad is a grounding image and metaphor in the dialogue, setting the stage for the journey that is initiated there, as well as being an end-point at which the characters can sense what they have gleaned from their dialogue.  When thinking about this, I recollect a saying -- a rune -- from an old Celtic monastic rule:

“Different is the condition of everyone, and different the nature of each place.”

- The Rule of Saint Columbanus

Those who come together to commune, learn, discover and, in becoming friends, plumb the depths of our tenuous existence, must understand this rune, which is a guidepost to self-realization and our 'finding of ourselves' in being gathered-together with those who become our anamcara ("soul friends").

 I am also reminded of this rune from the Anglican hermit Maggie Ross:

“Each moment we are beginning anew on the foundation of what has gone before.” (212)

 

- Maggie Ross The Fountain and the Furnace (1987)

 

While this applies to every moment of our lives, to enter into active remembrance, recollection and then experience some resourcement in dialogue with others is to find oneself at potentially 'new' and 'deeper'  'foundations' of our being-in-becoming.  The dialogue which begins in this first Act opens, very quickly, to moving below the surfaces of everyday consciousness, tapping into the 'otherworld' of memory and even dream.