this is my
place
I stood on the edge of the great rift valley
laid like a soft coloured carpet that stretched into the
mists
at the worlds end...such space... such sky... such
silence...
it was as if every dream and every story ever told was
stitched
by loving hands, in soft threads of mist- muted purples and
greys,
pale greens and gentle stone browns... an eagle hung in the
lazy air, and a lift of breeze brought only warmth to my
skin.
maybe this was this what I was looking for... that sense of
place?
In malaysia I sat in blistering sun, on a rock high above
the tea
plantations,which grow like corduroy ribbing as far as you
can see..I could hear chimes from the small pink temple
below. and see the tea pickers moving slowly along the
rows, their voices hanging in the heat..but..was this what
I was looking for? the place?
there were the hours in a small boat in mangrove swamps.
wrapped in heat sapping silence, with only the sound of mud
bubbles and shifting roots, and small unseen animals.
mysteriously green light filtered down on the muddy
water... there was no world outside. no sense of place.
no, this was not my place...
days wandering the back streets of vienna, where small
shops display voluptious silk ball gowns and cobweb
gossamer shoes to dance with a prince at a viennese ball.
the scent of coffee drited from windows, someone was
playing mozart, the waterfall ofnotes tumbling down the
narrow steet...I drank coffee sitting on plush red velvet
chairs. shopped in delight of adventure and quest... but
moved on, to another place...
then... being soaked to the skin, running the rapids on the
curling blackness of the Zambesi river, and lunch on a
small beach shared by crocodiles, and chugging gently up
the river at sundown, watching night drop along the banks
and over the grasslands. hearing the night song of Africa
across silvered water. this indeed brought sense of
place...
and exhilaratingly happy hours in scottish hills and
forests racing huskies down rutted tracks with rattling
rigs, while the dogs
delight filled the air with a spine tingling excitement
from another world, a wilder world, closer to my place...?
and so to Cessford, the old border fort where the wind
whistles through
empty windows, through doors and round corners and away
over
the green patchwork of fields... sheep graze on the green,
trees make shade, every stone holds a tale... set on the
hilltop, aloof, composed. rich in its history, my ancestors
lived here, stealing sheep. pillaging, defending their own.
this is my place....!
pim claridge