So there we are the other night, careening through the Second Street Tunnel, the three of us (me in the back seat) all at the same time remembering that line from Poltergeist about not going into the light, Carol Anne; don't go into the light.  Of course we have no intention of turning around.  It is just the way the light is and the sort of thing people say in the moment, in a tunnel.     

We are on our way to hear Michael Silverblatt of KCRW's "Bookworm" have a conversation with Azar Nafisi [Things I've Been Silent About: A Memoir in Moments; Reading Lolita in Tehran] at the L.A. Public Library downtown.

What appeals to us is the convergence of elements.  A woman reading Nabokov in Iran.  An Iranian woman talking about teaching Lolita in an American university or teaching The Great Gatsby in Iran; about what happens in translation, about why we read and why we write, and about what we have to say to each other at this time in our history.  About the need for a dialogue that is more than "'O'Reilly and Olberman."   

I think of still more ways the world converges.  Of the Iranian writer Bozorg Alavi who is born in Tehran in 1904 (and dies in 1997 in Berlin), whose novel Chashm' ha' yash [Her Eyes] is published in Iran in 1952 and is subsequently banned [Source]. Alavi translates Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (which premieres in 1904) into Persian.

Or I could think of other tunnels.  For instance, construction on the Rotherhithe Tunnel beneath the Thames in East London, connecting Limehouse to Rotherhithe and known as the A101, commences in 1904.  

As I have tried to say over and over again, it is about finding a point of convergence.  Arbitrary or not, but one that's yours.  A framing device or perspective if you will.  A specific point in time, perhaps, a particular point of view, a reference point, that point of light, that vanishing point that draws the eye.   As my neighbor says to me this morning it is the moment when that pilot landed his plane on the Hudson River, when she found herself reminded of the good in the world.  It is that moment or any moment -- of a child being born and the opening of a play, men digging a tunnel and landing a plane and falling in love in another language -- when everything appears to be connected.