CONTRASTS I have just got back from a brief stay in Ireland, and now, in this torrid heat, I find myself reminiscing about that “cool” country I just left. Ireland, green land where the sky and sea merge together into one large stain in an indefinite space. Where the hills of a nearly blinding freshness are replaced by rocky high cliffs and immense sandy beaches. Where castles and fortresses remind one of an intriguing past of legends and bloody wars of a people used to fighting to get what they want, people who seem to have found that balance between pride and letting go. Where the air is sharp and soaked in a sense of magic and where music permeates in every where, in the pubs, in the mystic landscapes and even in the inhabitants speaking tones. Where fairy-folk and traditions are interwoven with a modern and open mentality. The weather is never really a problem because the atmosphere is forever warm and to compensate that constant greyness the houses seem to explode with colour. Each one, standing in a line, looks at you brightly painted and smiling. CONTRASTS AND INTEGRATING DIVERSITIES. A smokey bleak sky disappearing behind a pea-green house with a purple front door adjacent to more sombre identical house with a dark blue facade and shamrock green windows... A sheet of an unchangeable blue with its blazing raging Father Sun gazing impassive over the dark grey stones of the farmhouses... The nearly luminescent brightness of a surreal green where sheep and lazy cows lazily graze... Burnt fields in the shade of an ochre brown with the singular twisted trunks of the olive trees surrounded by impertinent sunflowers who stare without shame in the direction of that paternal flare... CONTRASTS, TWO SIDES OF A COIN. Morning, a cup of arson hot tea, a freshly baked fruit scone served with butter, jam and whipped cream, sitting at a little wooden table looking at the rain gently fall making a soft tune on the metallic table outside... A lukewarm cappuccino and a “cornetto”, sitting at a bar table outside in the square, listening to the morning swallows chasing each other in circles and screeching above the high walls of the medieval hamlet... Contrasts – Umbria and Cork, Italy and Ireland – they complement one another, characterizing and completing each other in a unique dimension, which is my reality. TWO CULTURES, ALWAYS PEOPLE. People who love, who hate, who cry and laugh – people who carry their life time baggage and inevitably project them into their habitations in the form of objects placed on the mantlepiece, photos or paintings on the wall: memories of a life time, a reminder of future dreams... all absorbed in the walls of their houses.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 08:25:47 +0000
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