Monday 3 March 2014

The Experience of the Desert 2

Yesterday we had a storm. A sand storm.

I still remember my first sand storm. Everything was orangish-yellowish. I was puzzled by the matter-of-fact tone of student who calmly pointed out to a teacher that the weather had changed and asked to close the window. It was my first week here. I thought it fascinating.

As the time passed by I realized that sand storms aren't so common as I first thought. I still have a hard time identifying them (that might partly because I'm easily distracted by my particular world that I don't realize much what is going around).

Yesterday, however, was a day that was easily recognizable though. For as soon as I went out of the school building to the playground, my lungs filled with slime reacted and I coughed until I almost got asphyxiated.

Yesterday, everything was greyish-whitish. As one who loses her sight, as one who sees life from the other side (or that's how I imagine these near death experiences).

Yesterday, I not only had dust in my hair and skin (like everyday, of course), but I smelled and tasted it. It is bland. It stinks pollution - after all this is a city with over 20 million inhabitants, a huge auto-mobile fleet and few environmental laws.

Now, the most impressive was the evening. I was not outside only for the sake of reporting to this blog. I was a teacher who stayed late in school working to grade all the necessary papers that should be on the progress reports. And I walk home from work. For 20 minutes or so.

I felt something wasn't normal. But with all that dust, and my coughing and my levels of self-pity sky reaching... A-ha! The sky. It was evening. It is winter. It should be dark. It was grey. A grey without light beyond it. Moonless grey. A star-spangled-less grey. It reminded me of Perelandra, that has round roof. Only imagine if Ransom's mission had failed - a fallen Perelandra.

It also reminded of the time in the Middle-Earth when the shadows were dominant and the hope left the heart of all. And since I am right now reading The Return of the King, it gave me a whole new insight on how it started when Mordor comes upon Gondor. It wasn´t pitch dark as in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, but still, it stroke me the speech of Ghân: "It is all dark, but it not all night".

And so it continued today.

And so here am I trying to blog again after a pause caused by acute back pains. It will be only four months until I return to Brazil and I wanted to process the experience well. Let's travel together again! 

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