I remember the first time when I tried to talk to people about Perugia, people who never lived here. Outsiders. And I realized I couldn't. People nagging me about what's happening, asking for a story and I just stayed mute. I tried to talk in the beginning but then I realized there is a serious communications breakdown happening. Later I changed my habits and started to talk about something totally casual. After some time I realized a lot of us are haunted by this strange sensation. The mystery of it never stopped coming back to me.
Why? Could it be that we cannot talk of things because there is nothing real here anymore? Nothing that truely exist? Nothing? What if the old city has been dead for centuries by now, without anybody noticing it? And now as we love and caress it there is nothing else we hold between our arms, but a two thousand year old mummy? Maybe the only living things left here are the human beings that are called here by the darkness that lives in the middle of the mountain, called from different places of the globe, and then they are left alone wandering around in the dark mist of the Valley of the Shadows. Our eyes clouded by fog, our hearts filled with despair. We just float around like the particles of physical gas, people who rarely find one an other but when they finally do, they really stick together, gaining reassurance by feeling the light of other living creatures, because it really helps to keep the nothingness, that surrounds us, away. Little fireflies in the night. Chains, strange forms, circles of light. Maybe that's why we come here. The spectacle of light is always clearer in the darkness. We can see the beauty, the shining of the soul much better in this ethernal valley of the Umbras. A merry christmas to everyone. I love you my friends, this post is for all of you who enlightened my life.(this picture is temporary i'll replace it as soon as I get my laptop back on the 11th of january)
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ReplyDeleteNothing to add... I would just like to share my drop that is running down my right cheek... you are so right Andràs.
ReplyDeleteDamn how I miss that city.
Just one hour ago I was sharing my pictures from last year with my friends. First time I shared them after having not watched them for a while.... when I opened the first of the 3 albums, all these faces were coming to my face, all these places that only me could really understand... gees, it hurt and still hurts.
I'm crying inside and I wish I could cry for real.
Thank you Andràs for that post. Thanks for your sensitiveness, thanks for your words, thanks for you.
With love,
Myriam
You do have a point Andras, what you're saying is quite close to what I've been thinking recently but if discussing this makes any sense at all I'd like to say that I don't see the city as dead and void. I believe it is/was us who live/lived next to it's stream of life instead of stepping in. We choose/chose the outsider space as it's easier to take - being uninhabited as you said. It's true what we have been saying over and over after leaving pg - the experience was 'unreal'. Maybe we should note though that it might have been unreal on more levels than just because of being 'cool' or 'awesome' and cutting yourself out of everyday life in your hometown. I guess it was unreal as it not what it could have been if we chose our space differently. It made my time in pg special and heartwarming but leaves a tiny bit of bitter-sweet kind of memories.
ReplyDeleteI thing I'm not exactly being clear right now.
Anyways: Happy New Year everybody!
Well, I feel quite the same way as I try to say something about My-Other-Life in Germany: I just can't talk about it, not really. Nor I can 'describe' it, or 'tell' it.
ReplyDeleteFor one*, I think, cannot describe or tell any place, nor any life with regard to the place where it goes on, no matter the beauty or mistery or the story of that place: there's something still missing to me to make up a tale of My-Life-There, and that is: an Adventure.
(* one who is not Calvino)
well thank you for your feedback it's really precious to me... I would only like to point out that this is not a diary or some kind of emotional confession, I just happen to get into moods and when I do I hang on to them, and try to explore them... This whole blog is about making photos, and doing some writing, in a language that i'm not a native speaker of... Writing something that people might like, that might get to them. And I always try to write to the blog when I get into this kind of mood to keep it in the same style ;) I might change the style but I feel like for autumn and winter this is the most convenient. And Eleonora I have Le cittá invisibili right in front of me and as soon as I finish reading Alice in Wonderland in English I'll promise I'll start it... ;)
ReplyDeleteOuuh finally! :D
ReplyDelete(And I never suspected you to write a diary... that's soo obsolete!) ;)
Have a bright 2010