SEA
ROCK
EARTH
SKY
Every moment brings new leaves to you,
amazement overwhelming every other
fleeting joy: life comes on headlong waves
to this far garden corner.
Now you stare down at the soil:
an undertow of memories
reaches your heart and almost overwhelms it.
A shout in the distance: see, time plummets,
disappears in hurried eddies
among the stones, all memory gone: and I
from my dark lookout reach
for this sunlit occurrence.
- EUGENIO MONTALE -
Rocks form the basis, holding tight to the sides of the cliffs, while the five villages spill over them towards the sea. And the sea itself is the impermanent - the symbol of constant change, of tides and swirls and weather patterns. A dynamic ebb-and-flow that will outlast both you and I.
At the very brink, there is a surging power. Earth meets sea meets sky.
And there, in sleepy towns, visited by hordes of colourful daytrippers, tradition holds on tight like a limpet shell. The coming of spring heralds a procession, priests passing carpets of flowers - Italian mandalas wrought on the ground by petals that flutter in the wind. One swift gust could scatter the pictures therein. Nature here holds a fine balance - a kind of to-and-fro, where people have burrowed into the cracks and crannies.
I was all reverence on the cliffs - standing and imagining a beautifully tragic fall, a joining of me and the sea. The longing to belong filled my being then.
