Chronicle of a Journey to the Dark Side of the Earth: Part 2

The Fragrance of Flowers and the Subtleties of Love

The sky is overcast with frozen industrial pollution and the air is grey and gritty with blowing coal dust. In silent, resigned determination, an endless stream of cyclists, bundled against the Manchurian blasts, pedal the socialist bike lane under portraits of their Chairman, Great Leader, Dear Leader, their heads bowed, exhaling plumes of frosty breath. Pumping up and down, their calf muscles flex rhythmically under the layers of rayon long-johns under their pathetic cotton trousers, the chill benevolence of the oxymoronic people's democratic dictatorship. Profound depression is the dominant emotion, the goal of socialism justifying whatever means, however cruel, might be necessary to achieve an upstairs and a downstairs, indoor plumbing, enough to eat, electric lights and a telephone.

The whole truth has still not been told. Beauty passes by unrecognized in the bike lane. One by one, the individual faces in the passing multitude spark a torrent of associations. Looking carefully and with some sensitivity we can perceive a mad montage pieced together from the shards of living memory.

Here's the first image: A damp and vaguely pleasant humus smell permeates a jade green landscape enchanted with bird song, the distant hilltops fading into a mist as subtle as an innuendo. And then, a sudden immensity of dirty coal lies under a banshee wind in a landscape where the brick chimneys of foundries belch smoke and soot and people are bent and misshapen, numb to blowing grit and sleet, and impervious to the fragrance of flowers and the subtleties of love.

To be continued…