My friends from the vast city drive to a dirty town at the.base of a hill on a weekend at the fag end of summer..Everything is distance, the low sky shimmers, the warm.air gleams with light..Good, says everyone. Excellent. They take their luggage.up to their rooms, wash the grit from their hair,.humming. The town is as old as a stony hill and large as.one decrepit neighbourhood. Night fills it like a slow.water thick with dreadful secrets..My friends never have to choose between logic and.excitement. They plan the hours carefully, then walk in the.morning to where fifteen empty buses sing love songs.while their pilots sleep among the vacant seats, forever.condemned to dream of flight..Precise late morning shadows mingle beneath the feet of.small town tourists: awful shirtless men holding baby.boys, families the size of wedding parties, married girls so.blank-eyed they might have left themselves elsewhere, in.that other hot and ochre town where they were born. My.friends slowly turn brown or browner, full of a careful.happiness among the waterfalls and the sensuous.boatmen who wander, oar in hand, half in dream and half.in hunger..Good, says everyone. Excellent. The night smells of fish.and old granite cooling. And also of pineapple, garbage.and rivers. friends drink in their hotel room at.evening. Caught between despair and understanding, we.presume to touch the heart of things. Places we see yield.their light, their memory for what would still green.trees be if they were not trees tor us?.And that is the holiday at the base of a hill in the town.with the white-haired waterfalls. The vast city is untidy,.complex, full of lies and defeat. My friends will disappear.into it, their car joining twenty others at a murderous red.light. We have seen them for this short while—only.because the town was tacky and little, and they were in.their brightest summer clothes.
My friends from the vast city drive to a dirty town at the.base of a hill on a weekend at the fag end of summer..Everything is distance, the low sky shimmers, the warm.air gleams with light..Good, says everyone. Excellent. They take their luggage.up to their rooms, wash the grit from their hair,.humming. The town is as old as a stony hill and large as.one decrepit neighbourhood. Night fills it like a slow.water thick with dreadful secrets..My friends never have to choose between logic and.excitement. They plan the hours carefully, then walk in the.morning to where fifteen empty buses sing love songs.while their pilots sleep among the vacant seats, forever.condemned to dream of flight..Precise late morning shadows mingle beneath the feet of.small town tourists: awful shirtless men holding baby.boys, families the size of wedding parties, married girls so.blank-eyed they might have left themselves elsewhere, in.that other hot and ochre town where they were born. My.friends slowly turn brown or browner, full of a careful.happiness among the waterfalls and the sensuous.boatmen who wander, oar in hand, half in dream and half.in hunger..Good, says everyone. Excellent. The night smells of fish.and old granite cooling. And also of pineapple, garbage.and rivers. friends drink in their hotel room at.evening. Caught between despair and understanding, we.presume to touch the heart of things. Places we see yield.their light, their memory for what would still green.trees be if they were not trees tor us?.And that is the holiday at the base of a hill in the town.with the white-haired waterfalls. The vast city is untidy,.complex, full of lies and defeat. My friends will disappear.into it, their car joining twenty others at a murderous red.light. We have seen them for this short while—only.because the town was tacky and little, and they were in.their brightest summer clothes.
