13 February 2010
30 January 2010
It started with a matter-of-fact invitation from our host, a curt and jittery woman in her fifties.
“Do you want to go to the waterfall?”
We said: what waterfall? “The waterfall on our property”. As it appeared, the waterfall had been classified a national site of sorts. Our curiosity piqued, we answered that we would love to. In hindsight, there was nothing peculiar about her suggestion: our host was sending us off on what we supposed to be the customary promenade around these parts.
Soon enough, our happy-go-lucky party – children, grand parents, the whole lot of us – set about our casual stroll, which we, judging from the offhand manner with which the invitation had been delivered, fancied to be a gratifying “stroll in the park”.
Quickly we realized the “property” was turning out to be an expansive piece of rugged if not hostile farmland, not your usual picket-fenced, flowers-strewn backyard which the use of the word “property” should have suggested. It was stretching several miles into a hollow valley hemmed in by the surrounding mountains.
What also slowly dawned on us was that the rations of water we brought along would not suffice, as we passed one dusty road bend after another, without any evidence that the arid piece of land we were plodding through could actually harbour something that looked remotely like a waterfall. In fact, I remember my father among the petrified cactuses starting to seriously doubt its existence, suggesting that since our host had last set foot on her property, she had not only lost sight of how far the bloody place was, she also had not been made aware that there was no more water to speak of in this desiccated piece of land.
All in all, the stroll proved an anxiety-ridden experience, a laborious hike along rocky cliffs and thorny bush, having eventually to clamber up loose and slippery boulders, not knowing where and when it would end.
The way back turned out to be particularly nerve-racking. By the time we made up our mind to return, a storm had started to brew above our heads. I became worried for I knew our cars were parked along a potentially muddy and slippery ridge. I began to increase the pace of my walk, and eventually ended up running like a lunatic with Matteo wedged between my arms, amidst howling wind and a starting rain.
27 January 2010
In the company of beasts.
The elephants had the look of beasts about to be unleashed. The kornaks certainly behaved like antique gatekeepers, momentarily invested with some incommensurable power. Their burnished skin glinting in the midday sun, their chest thrust forward, they seemed to bear a momentous responsibility: they were the last bulwark against the onslaught of Savagery...
Perhaps this was part of some rehearsed choreography, yet the awesomeness of the beasts at the back removed any form of pretense: we were afoot, in the company of beasts.
24 January 2010
View from the winding road.
Close to Somerseat East, the winding road led through leafy farmland to an old rickety wooden house perched at the back of the mountain ridge.The hollow floors creaked and squeaked like the floorboards of an old ship's deck, and the sheets had the mustiness of never-slept-in beds. The patio - an unadorned block of drab concrete - opened on to a field of stunted thorn trees, where mountain goats were engrossed in their grazing, oblivious of us. The evening was spent in the dim light of antiquated oil lamps.
On the day we arrived, it had no rained for months. In spite of a good measure of hard won skepticism, having learned to distrust nature and its ways, our hosts had nevertheless pinned their hopes on the black clouds which throughout the afternoon had churned and seethed above the valley, and when we came back from our strenuous walk to the waterfall, something snapped and cracked in the wind, and it started to rain. A faint inconsistent drizzle at first, which slowly turned into something steadier, yet still inchoate. By nightfall, the darkness was full of it, trickling down the corrugated roofs, rushing in the gutters, perfuming the patio's concrete block: the slaking of a thirst so immense that you felt it in your bones and that it permeated your dreams.
In the morning, the landscape had dissolved into a moving mist. I found a rain spider lying on the window sill. It occurred to me that rain and night and thunder had with dawn been transmogrified into the tiny creature, who, with a last dash, retreated into the folds and knots of the tumbledown house.
09 January 2010
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