(Chinese proverb: "May you be born in better times")
Scene 1
(Eyes Open)
As you approach the city, heading down into the valley, you see lush green vegetation nestling beside the road, clinging desperately onto scraps of soil at impossible angles. Tree trunks potrude from the cliff edge, menacingly like coiled vipers, with dry barks and leaves that look like giraffes ears. The road meanders through rich farm pastures; cut like verandas on the hills, sectioned like an irregular chess board and in a motley of every conceivable shade of green; an idyllic mosaic patchwork slicing through the unforgiving landscape.
The dark, melancholy clouds; tempestuous and brooding in the background, hover above the sprawling city that now stands below you and stretches into the distant horizon. Black vultures circle above adding an eerie menace and foreboding to the proceedings. When you enter the city, as if to underscore the above, the rain starts. Tit-tat, Tit-tat, at first and then pelting. It softens the red ochre earth of the roads so that the wheels of cars and tractors can bite and churn up huge clumps of it in turd-like mounds all over the surface. The roads have the consistency of melted chocolate that has been freeze dried in liquid nitrogen. Puddles form here and there. Some the size of footballs others the size of a bus. The vehicles navigate through this treacherous assault course of boulders, misshapes and unsightly angles.
The sides of the road are lined with people, walking in the rain like an army of displacees, carrying bags, children and those universal ‘made in China’ wheeled luggage cases that are all the rage now. The people hold bright brollys with one hand and with the other, hold their trousers up to their knees, allowing the soft, squishy mud to seep into their shoes. Where it settles all right; content like a cat that has found a warm rug for the night.
The constant barking of horns, chatter of trade, clutter of mercantilism and the skidding wheels spraying mud onto the poor people on the sidewalk; cakeing them in fist sized clumps of road, only serves to heighten the scene of abject misery. Then there’s the smell; the smell of rain that has not fallen for many months on a scorched and dry surface. The smell of fresh rain is everywhere. You can smell the damp earth as it seeps into your nostrils and lingers. The people, the squalor, the dirt, the mud, the roads, the horns, where is this going? Yet nobody gives up and says: ‘I’ve had enough. What’s the point?’ As Sisyphus almost did.
The trudging continues, through thick mud. The sight is both depressing and yet simultaneously a testament to the tenacity of people. People plod on, through thick and thin. Through life. Like drudges, lambs to the slaughter, eventually.
(Eyes close)
Scene 2
(Eyes open)
You are greeted by a mob of smiling tungsten’s. Tungsten yellows that have been filtered through a custard factory. You find yourself bathed in sweet, hazy sunshine with the intensity of twilight day. The tree under which you sit, glistens and shimmers lazily with the breeze; almost sighing contentedly. The sand, coarse between your toes, feels warm and characteristically gets everywhere.
Beyond, in the distant horizon the sun hovers pensively as if reluctant to let go of the day, but is yanked down, like a stringed prop on a stage show. Its colors changing like a chameleon. Citrus lemon followed by Del Monte orange with hints of marmalade. In the foreground, the blue ocean, sparkles with calm yoga-esqe serenity, waiting to close the curtains on the day.
The clouds, wispy and careless, loaf about waiting for something to happen, but not knowing quite what. They playfully meddle, basking in the warmth, forming magnificent rays that seem to pierce the heavens like skyscrapers of light.
The scene is brimming with a tableau of wavelengths. Reds, oranges and purples; as if conspired by a Photoshop fiend. The shadows get longer and longer, until they are shadows no more and have morphed with everything. The wind glides above the lapping waves as the sun finally disappears behind the horizon, exposing the sky that has now turned pink. Pink like marshmallows.
Eventually, the sky turns purple and then velvety black inviting the stars to come out to play. A few at first, and then finally an orchestra. You can almost hear the swan song of a great opera, as the final photons of daylight flicker out in style, replaced by the artificial, up-start and spunky neon babies of mankind.
(Eyes close)
