Edgar Allen Poe said:
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.
palms, that is. It’s one of those days, or evenings, rather. The road is quite beautiful, winding its way through hills, and then finding its way back onto the beach. It’s dark outside, naturally, but the moon is quite full. There seems to be some mist on the hills, just a tiny little bit.
I want to drive down this road in the daytime. It calls to me. Yesterday, we drove down the small roads in Goa. Avoiding the national highways, we chose instead to pick the smallest, narrowest, most winding, and probably the most beautiful roads. Helped a little by technology, we found palm shaded roads, and sandy beaches that were devoid of life.
It was a good trip.
Now, though, it is a most twenty nine palm evening. The lamp posts flash by like sentinels, but it is in the in-between spaces that the night is indigo. Crossing a port, there are gently rounded hills in the distance. I wish I was qualified to pilot a small plane. There is nothing quite so irritating as having to take the road more traveled, even as small forested lanes branch invitingly away. I am so sure that walking even a hundred feet along any of those lanes will lead me to a different time. Far away from the rumbling diesel engine I hear now as the driver changes gear to negotiate a steep gradient.
Sadly, there is no possibility of stepping out and going a-wandering. Time to head back to work, and face the day. Seize it, even. Carpe Diem, FTW.
This melancholy veil is rudely shaken away. Not by fate or circumstance(except in a roundabout way), but by the combination of two immutable facts:
1. The road has suddenly deteriorated
2. I happen to be sitting on top of the tyre. Shock absorption is all very well, but not when I am the one absorbing the damn shocks!
Hmm. I think we have crossed into Karnataka. The roads sing in Kannada now, which is slightly staccato, not in Portugese, which flows a lot more easily from the tongue. Its quite curious that K’ntaka has roads that are so much worse than all its neighbours. It might be a deliberate ploy to either keep people out, or slow them down once they are in the state, so that they spend a little more money and rescue the local economy.
Talking of rescuing, I must say that one meets strange characters in Goa. Not much more to say here, but the shacks on Calungute beach are populated with people right out of the pages of various novels. There’s the Hemingway types, the Ian Fleming type, even the Danielle Steele type. Fun, nevertheless.
The palmy feeling has passed, since I am now writing this the next day. I saved the first bit to complete later, so now I shall aim for five hundred words, and then stop. Why five hundred? No reason, really, just a obsessive desire to see this post rounded off now.
The end of an era, perhaps? Heartening nevertheless to see the respect these two have for each other.
Is it too early to start whispering the unthinkable? Can Nadal actually become the first man after Rocket Rod to win the Grand Slam? Let’s see.. French Open, there’s no way he’s losing. The Championship is not set in stone though. Yes, Rafa is good on grass, but he’s not yet reached the statues of Roger or Pete there. It’s iffy.
One thing is for sure though. If he does win Wimbledon, there’s no way that he will lose the US Open.