Tuesday, March 30, 2021

A Conversation in Gestures, This Morning (4 Images)

A conversation in full bloom in the upper floor at left

 

I suppose I heard the loud voice at the same time I saw the hands gesturing out the window, but it's the latter that stopped me in my tracks and kept me watching. Soon enough I no longer really heard the voice, didn't even notice the topic of conversation, just the movement of the hands, telling their own story.

It took me a little while to realize that both the words and the gesticulations were addressed across the calle to a woman standing out of sight in a ground floor doorway. And that every now and then--but only rarely--there was a reply from the ground floor doorway, vocal or gestural, or some combination of both, but in either case nowhere near as loud or expressive as her interlocutor on the upper floor. Neither the hands nor voice on the ground floor could get a word in edgewise, as they say, but that's not to say the person on the upper floor was overbearing, just animated. If I didn't have errands to run, I would have liked to stay a while longer, not to eavesdrop, but to watch for the unpredictable appearances of the hands coming out with some flourish or other from the upper window, then disappearing again. 

 





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