Afternoon on the River

July 8, 1981

I saw the tableau once before in a pictured scene: a family boating on the river, the father fishing, his small son clutching at his leg to keep from falling overside, the mother gathering lotus blossoms -- the same except for different rivers: this one the Orange, The other, the Nile with another and invisible river: the three thousand years that flow between. This picture reenacts the other as though we are all so much a part of every man's experience that wherever we go, whatever we do, somet hing stirs, something remembers.