In the South of France, some fifteen kilometers east of Avignon, in the summer 1970

It is a warm evening under a sky shining with stars on a terrace, with the smell of laurel trees overpowering lavender and thyme. The cicadas have stopped at sunset and in the quiet of the night the only noises now are the crickets and the croaks of some small green frogs in the irrigation ditches in the cantaloupe fields. I look at the sky but my mind is elsewhere, enchanted by what I am hearing about a film with an intriguing title about the distance of a wave. I am left puzzled by what I am told, a marvelous account of a complex time machine and philosophical toy. I am also curious to understand how one person can be so utterly fascinated by what somebody else has previously described to me as the most boring film ever made in which nothing happens, and it takes forty-five minutes to do so.1 How can something be an aesthetic revolution for one person and a negligible,inconsequential occurrence for another? That summer day I decided that I had to see it for myself, even if it meant traveling to New York City where the film was shot. (That would be my first airplane trip,my first of many other things as well.) I felt in love that night under the stars with the idea of understanding the complexity of the world and the seeming impossibility of satisfying the compulsion to solve contradictions. I also felt in love with the romantic urge to chart new territory.