what gives it value is fear
Santo Domingo de la Calzada
29th of June
As we move into Castile we are accompanied on either side of the road by aqueducts and other more modern systems of irrigation, for the water grows less. Like pastries of red lava the rocks rise in visible layers. Fields are no longer dark and edged closed with woods but stretch out and roll away beneath the eye, sectioned in areas of ocher and amber and red. Nine months of winter, three months of hell is the proverbial description of climate on the Meseta. No dark green wheat riding in waves under the wind here, as there was all through Navarre. No wind at all. That smell is light, ready to fall on us. One day closer to the plain of Leon.
We live by waters breaking out of the heart.
My Cid loves heat and is very elated. He rarely gets thirsty. "I was born in the desert." Twice a day, at meals, he drinks a lot of wine, staring at the glass in genial amazement as it empties itself again and again. He grows heavier and heavier like a piece of bread soaking, or a fish that floats dreamily out of my fingers down deeper and deeper in the tank, turning round now and then to make dim motions at me with its fins, as if in recognition, but in fact it does not recognize me--gold shadows flash over it, out of reach, gone. Who is this man? I have no idea. The more I watch him, the less I know. What are we doing here, and why are our hearts invisible? Once last winter when we were mapping out the pilgrimage on his kitchen table, he said to me, "Well, what are you afraid of, then?" I said nothing. "Nothing." Not an answer. What would your answer be?
We think we live by keeping water caught in the trap of the heart. Coger en un trampa is a Spanish idiom meaning "to catch in a trap." Coger por el buen camino is another, constructed with the same verb; it means "to get the right road." And yet to ensnare is not necessarily to take the right road.
Afraid I don't love you enough to do this.
Pilgrims were people who got the right verb.
*
Villa Major del Rio
30th of June
The town of Villa Major del Rio, My Cid observes, is three ways a lie. "It is not a town, it is not big and there is no river." The observations are correct. Notwithstanding, we lunch, and over lunch a conversation--without action, in which he does not believe. I would relate the conversation and outline the theory of his belief but theories elude me unless I write them down at the time. Instead, I was watching his dreamy half smile. It floats up through his face from the inside, like water filling an aquarium, when he talks about God. For his conversations about action (we have had more than one) are all descriptions of God, deep nervous lover's descriptions.
I should have taken photographs. A theory of action is hard to catch, and I know only glimpses of his life--for instance, at home he makes his own bread (on Saturday morning, very good bread). He thought about being a priest (at one time). He could have made a career on the concert stage, and instead built a harpsichord (red) in the dining room. The harpsichord goes unmentioned in Villa Major del Rio. I am telling you this because a conversation is a journey, and what gives it value is fear. You come to understand travel because you have had conversations, not vice versa. What is the fear inside language? No accident of the body can make it stop burning.
Anne Carson, "The Anthropology of Water"
29th of June
As we move into Castile we are accompanied on either side of the road by aqueducts and other more modern systems of irrigation, for the water grows less. Like pastries of red lava the rocks rise in visible layers. Fields are no longer dark and edged closed with woods but stretch out and roll away beneath the eye, sectioned in areas of ocher and amber and red. Nine months of winter, three months of hell is the proverbial description of climate on the Meseta. No dark green wheat riding in waves under the wind here, as there was all through Navarre. No wind at all. That smell is light, ready to fall on us. One day closer to the plain of Leon.
We live by waters breaking out of the heart.
My Cid loves heat and is very elated. He rarely gets thirsty. "I was born in the desert." Twice a day, at meals, he drinks a lot of wine, staring at the glass in genial amazement as it empties itself again and again. He grows heavier and heavier like a piece of bread soaking, or a fish that floats dreamily out of my fingers down deeper and deeper in the tank, turning round now and then to make dim motions at me with its fins, as if in recognition, but in fact it does not recognize me--gold shadows flash over it, out of reach, gone. Who is this man? I have no idea. The more I watch him, the less I know. What are we doing here, and why are our hearts invisible? Once last winter when we were mapping out the pilgrimage on his kitchen table, he said to me, "Well, what are you afraid of, then?" I said nothing. "Nothing." Not an answer. What would your answer be?
We think we live by keeping water caught in the trap of the heart. Coger en un trampa is a Spanish idiom meaning "to catch in a trap." Coger por el buen camino is another, constructed with the same verb; it means "to get the right road." And yet to ensnare is not necessarily to take the right road.
Afraid I don't love you enough to do this.
Pilgrims were people who got the right verb.
*
Villa Major del Rio
30th of June
The town of Villa Major del Rio, My Cid observes, is three ways a lie. "It is not a town, it is not big and there is no river." The observations are correct. Notwithstanding, we lunch, and over lunch a conversation--without action, in which he does not believe. I would relate the conversation and outline the theory of his belief but theories elude me unless I write them down at the time. Instead, I was watching his dreamy half smile. It floats up through his face from the inside, like water filling an aquarium, when he talks about God. For his conversations about action (we have had more than one) are all descriptions of God, deep nervous lover's descriptions.
I should have taken photographs. A theory of action is hard to catch, and I know only glimpses of his life--for instance, at home he makes his own bread (on Saturday morning, very good bread). He thought about being a priest (at one time). He could have made a career on the concert stage, and instead built a harpsichord (red) in the dining room. The harpsichord goes unmentioned in Villa Major del Rio. I am telling you this because a conversation is a journey, and what gives it value is fear. You come to understand travel because you have had conversations, not vice versa. What is the fear inside language? No accident of the body can make it stop burning.
Anne Carson, "The Anthropology of Water"
posted by mh at 11:07 AM
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