Yonahton A. Bock
MALD ‘04
“SIGNS AND SIGNPOSTS”
There is a line in a popular Israeli folksong that goes as follows: “If I have lost the road that I have known for years; here and there, beside the road, different signs appear.” In the course of my travels, I often think back to that single lyric and the image it paints, the notion of moving away from that which is familiar only to be confronted in the most alien of places with images that draw you back home.
Travel, for me, has always been about connection rather than separation. While I consider Boston home, I have spent time in Canada, Israel, Poland, Austria, France, Italy, Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, India, Nepal, Poland, Romania, Mexico and, of course, the United States. In the most far-flung of places, I found myself feeling connected to the people I met and the land I traversed.
The written word, the sign-post, the advertisement, the public memo. These are all mundane objects scattered throughout the journey whose message, instantly recognizable, is both a marker of intimate communication and, as is often the case, a reminder of how far away you are from where you consider home. I love signs. I find them not only a source of frequent amusement, but also a window into my surroundings. Whether a yield sign on a Cape Cod bike path or a public health notice in a library in Northern India, signs provide aesthetic value and afford a hint of broader social values. Ultimately, they are not about grammatical gaffes, which though entertaining, also remind us that most people do not speak English and we would do no better in a foreign language like, say, Malayalam. Rather signs please because they are familiar enough to remind us of where we came from, and yet, in their difference, they remind us of where we are.
