What Was All The Fuss With The Tourist?

I was standing there on the gleaming Ozuk fields of Garafnilla, to which each person attaches a different name, and what I wrote will not be what you read it as, when I saw the tourist. We get a lot of tourists here, each one trying to discover within themselves what they meant by this place, coming with many questions. I have ceased standing on the path where they walk because I do not like to answer questions. I saw my friend addressed by the young male tourist, my friend the philosopher and people person, whom I have never met. Yet he is my friend nonetheless, because I have heard him talk and we share some similar views. He amuses himself with speaking to the travelers and tourists, which I have never understood. The young man asked him the question all people coming this way ask him, and he gave the same response he gives them all. I think he does it now just to see the inquisitive, disbelieving, confounded looks on their faces. Someday he may grow tired like me and join me on these fields, and then I will know him. As the tourist walked past, the family in the dark vanilla house behind the chartreuse weeds began playing all their instruments again to sing a ballad for the tourist. I knew they would; I dreaded it. They make a new one for every man, woman, boy or girl that passes, and sometimes they can be so dissonant. I listened; it wasn’t a terrible ballad, but just the same it sounded as though it swirled to the left and back instead of coming in on both ears evenly like any good song would. The tourist passed, and I went back to tending the gleaming Ozuk fields of Garafnilla as I do every day. Mark Burton Sunday, February 11, 2001, 11:46 P.M.