Mind Travels
My neighbour gifts me a little clay whistle. It is shaped like a bird, and the whistle is at the tail end. It comes all the way from Machu Pichu, it has a sweet voice. The steps at Machu Pichu are very high. Each step requires effort and strong back muscles to climb. The monument waits at the end of these steps and like all treasure, demands sacrifice and struggle to unlock its secrets to the traveller. The air is thin here, and yet curiously humid. It is a place of ancient energy, arrogant power, an eternal reminder of what might have been.
The red wax of the edam cheese sends me to the harbour in Amsterdam. Fifty or more years ago, a cheese market thrived here. Huge wheels of cheese were carried by on poles balanced on the shoulders of young men, dressed in the guild uniform of white with black trimming. The air was filled with their cries of Watch Out and Here we come, sung out in high Dutch. Three or four hundred years before, the sardonic gulls were still keeping an eye out for treats. Fortunes were made and lost, prosperous burghers and merchants dressed in rich silks strode these cobblestones, their ships, tall masted, holds filled with tulip bulbs and pepper, lying in the calm waters. Their sumptuous and sad ladies were forever frozen in portraits with an air of melancholy that lingers in the museum halls of this century.
In New Zealand, the Maoris tell us legends about Easter Island. Those brooding statues. Some are fallen on their side, others eroded by the wind and rain. The migrating birds wheel overhead, crying to their companions as they dive for fish in the stormy seas. At the pinnacle of a forgotten civilisation, the high and powerful grew obsessed with the construction of these monolith statues. Each statue erected enhanced the sponsor’s prestige and social standing. Gradually, welfare and development were ignored and their energies solely devoted to this fruitless pursuit. Research suggests the end of the civilisation came rapidly, even as the lines of statues stood sentinel. It is a sad and frightening place.
The ham on my plate comes from the Iberian hills. The pigs roam the wild meadows, snuffling and rooting for thyme and other herbs growing in the grass. They are herded back to the piggery, come the evening, to be fed troughfuls of milk and feed. Some are even rubbed down with the milk. I imagine it is a happy existence. At the end of their lives, they render a ham redolent of milk and thyme. Truly, they are what they eat. I remember to thank the pig for this gift of life and food.
The beignets are soft fluffy pillows of cloud. Hot from the fryer, dusted with sugar, they come to your table. A cup of bitter coffee, strains of jazz in the distance and New Orleans presents itself – a sassy, sultry, heady perfume, the top note of sweet innocence, darker undertones of murky swamp, and the steaming stink of corruption. It is strange to be in a modern city, by world standards at least, and to feel an arcane power flow over the skin. The air is tainted with this schizophrenic struggle between young and very old, music complex and articulated drowned out by chants and rhythms more felt than heard.
These are some of the places I have never travelled to. Except in my mind. Forgive me my flights of fancy. Reader, complete your travels and tell me new stories. Just now, I think I’ll close my eyes and leave for the Great Wall of China. The Mongols are coming.