Saturday, December 29, 2007

'So how did you come here? How... I mean... you're alone, right? People rarely come to the villages alone like these, they don't even come in tour groups.'
'I did come with a tour group. I left them behind... I came for the monument of the Tropic of Cancer, the boundary of the tropics thing.'
'That pillar down at the seaside? The one beside the highway?'
'Yes.'
'But why did you come here from there? It's quite a long walk from here, it's at least half an hour.'
'I was looking for the perspective from which this photo was taken. Here. See, it says "Home" behind, and I've wanted to-'
'I'm sorry, but where did you get this photograph from?'
'My mail. It's one of hundreds. It's one of the few with words on them. I don't know where the photos are coming from, that's why I'm here.'
'Are you from Singapore?'
'Yes.'
'And you are the one who got these photographs.'
'Yes. Why?'


The Chens' house has a balcony on the second floor, an extension of the room where they finally agreed to let her stay for the night. On the face of the person who had obtained all her answers, on his parents' faces, a strange, slow sadness has settled; they are kind enough, but everything is tinted with the caution of being hospitable to a guess who brings a telegram announcing a death in the family, in a place where the rest of the family has never been.

She still knows nothing, except for what the photograph and her own eyes tell her. The camera faces forward, onto the monumental pillar far in the background, it says nothing of the photographer behind it. How old is this photograph anyway, was it taken and then sent immediately? By coincidence the paddy fields are at around the same stage now as when the image was captured, even though the sky suggests a different time of year. Here she realises how completely foreign she is, she does not know either the habits of paddy farming or the way seasons move in Taiwan.

She only knows - or she doesn't, she senses - that something irreversible has happened.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Gostei muito desse post e seu blog é muito interessante, vou passar por aqui sempre =) Depois dá uma passada lá no meu site, que é sobre o CresceNet, espero que goste. O endereço dele é http://www.provedorcrescenet.com . Um abraço.