Day 184

Crops a-growing.

I ran just over 4 km today, became re-acquainted with my pretty meadow, filled with grasshoppers, butterflies, and the heady scent of milkweed.  Two blood-red male cardinals chased one another right across my path, so close that my face felt the breath of their wings.  And I saw 3 scarlet monarch butterflies loving their milkweed, lilting through the blossoms, the first or second generation, the fourth of which will fly the long migration south at the end of August. 

Languages affect your perception of words.  There is a sign on our road, we pass it on our way home every day, a little hand-painted sign which reads: DANS
                                                               Welding&
                                                               FABRICATION

So, because of Afrikaans, (the word dans is to dance in English) I have always seen people learning to dance when I read the first line.  The last line makes me imagine people being taught to lie, to fabricate.  I often think, what an interesting place that must be, where you not only learn to dance and to lie, but even to weld!

When we first arrived here, there are these signs in the road which say Ped Xing.  One day I asked Jess, "What on earth is a ped xing?", clicking my x like an xh in isiXhosa.  Of course Jess fell about laughing, because it is what we call in South Africa a zebra crossing, a pedestrian crossing. 

In Campagny

Luca, after searching through all his pockets, of which he had many, finally came across a hairpin belonging to his mother which he thought would do the job. 

Yes!  He had the little key and placed it carefully in an impression on a rock, struggling a little as to the exact position, and then immediately there was a feeling of falling through sudden darkness, his stomach dropping away into space. 

He was in the granite mountain, at the mouth of a cave.  He looked out to see a similar yet familiar landscape.  The mountain must have moved due to the gradual shifting of tectonic plates.  They had gone back a long way through time to find such a pristine landscape.  Everywhere was green, growing, the mountain itself cultivating dwellings like outcroppings.

A very green parrot flew in a soft colourful arc to a perch near his head. It tried a few different languages before it came upon English and sensed his recognition of his mother tongue.  "Who are you?", it asked then, and waited in patient repose, studying him with its small shining bead of an eye, its head cocked, expecting an answer, as if it was a simple question.