Haven't posted anything in a while, as I've started working in a warehouse, in the most menial profession, and because I've recently been too tired to write! One day, I hope to quit the drudgery, and commit to the joys in life- reading and writing- before the beast drains me completely.
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The Doll Maker of Ubaye Valley
MANTRA:
There is a place south beyond the Ubaye river, if you follow beyond the Mont Viso to where the ground is torn with anger and rears its jagged escarpments, as if concealing a great secret, enters into a sort of valley known as the Ubaye valley of the French Alps.
Here the air is clean and the land fertile with wide sweeping tracts of green land and the surrounding mountains -the wise patriarchs of this place- are capped in ice, yet their banks are country-land and harbour a great number of trees.
On my lone hike to the cisalpine of Italy, as I passed beyond the yawning decay of the rambling mountainside, the sun was richly setting to dusk, I remember my first impression of this hid den paradise, was of peace, serenity, and wonder. Immediately I set toward a distant lake, which I later learn was named Lac Bleau, where I refreshed my person and gazed out toward a flock of Alpine swifts and their close cousin, the majestic Citric finch. I had read a good deal on these birds, and their behaviours and sociability in my travel, books which kept me company in the dark howling nights under the bitter hanging clefts of th e Mont Viso, with only a battery lamp or camp-fire for sight. So, it was a pleasure to find them in their watering hole, and to observe the wheeling and skirting of their flock, enjoying, just as I was the cold lustre of sunlight.
It must be colder still down the pass, I thought, removing my pack and retrieving a varicoloured map that flapped gently in the wind, I could see the markings of the land further downhill, where the battle of Alesia had taken place over two thousand years ago, the battle-spoils and taxing of the Gauls from the formidable general Caesar , which led in its time to the Roman Civil War and the filibusting Cato, who guided the souls to purgatory and reprimanded the songs of the penitentes.
This place, for those who knew what it had to offer, was a historical goldmine, I promised myself to , as I checked the map again; I noted the hamlet of Les Thuiles and the considerably smaller Méolans-Revel, with the larger townlet of Jussiers hidden within the last petering fold of the mountain. It had been almost a week since I had last seen civilisation,
The quickest route to Les Thuiles, (that being the nearest town) was through a patch of dense forestry beyond the lake, and so donning my pack with a shrug, I embraced what I hoped to be the final stretch in my journey, before returning to society and reworking my route, being somewhat at lost as to the final steps I would take.
Now I'm presuming the reader has never visited this particular area, so I shall recount what I saw before me as I entered that dark cusp of woodland, known locally as le étranglé bois.
Imagine if you will, myself standing on the vantage of a high hill top looking Westerly (as I had come in from the East, following the course of the sun to my intended hamlet); far ahead lay the wide berth of snowfields and the town itself, very quietly bedazzled in the slow flicker of street-lamps.
On either side of the town it seemed the snow was in constant battle with the forest, which if went unchecked, it appeared as if it would run and never stop, and w hen it seemed the snow might win this emblematic battle pushing its foe back farther still, the forest only became denser, and strangely this was all populated by a single tree- the sturdy oak- which ran North and South as far the eye could see, in a sort of belt, with only sporadic patches of free-land.
And so knowing the country and where the town lay, I headed downhill, the gentian autumnal leaves rustling under my footfall and the low beckoning branches snagged at my rucksack and cut off completely the denser parts of the forest. I was navigating a route I considered best, when out ahead the sun towards the East with it's reassuring auburn glow was cut of by a figure quite far ahead, I could see it was a person off old age, the way he carried himself hunched and painfully.
'You there!' I shouted, increasing my steps into a slight jog, the prospect of conversation getting the better of me.
The old man stumbled, was he injured? I thought, he dragged a limp leg behind him, retreating from my advance, as once again I repeated my cry, his face twisted in fear and confusion, perhaps not knowing whither the voice was coming from. He was so far ahead that with many stumbles and pitiful cries, he had managed to mount the muddied hillock ahead, and with one lasting glance in my direction vanished over the other side, all before I could discern his features.
When I had come at last to the entangled scrub-land he was seen to hover, I poked around at the ground and beneath the growth of the juniper bushes, a patch of blistered white was revealed; mottled and obscured by the shade of leaves, and curious, I at once discarded my branch, and began to uproot the growth with my bare hands.
I collapsed to my knees gasping, as the figure of an adult female, to all appearances dead- lifeless and weather beaten was exposed like a nightmare to my already fatigued mind.
I at first thought a violent crime had been committed by this man, so life like was this figure before me, naked, half covered in dirt and leafage, weeds had grown around and between her extremities and her eyes vacant, as if shadowing death, were fixed on the tree-line beyond into the far distance.
My breath and heart failed me for a second, I could feel the terror rising up and out of of my throat in the gurgling embryo of a full bodied cry. If was not for the chipped and weathered paintwork that had displayed its varnished undercoat, or the exposed metallic pins beneath its limbs, thus revealing to me, only a wooden doll! I believe I would of ran back into the mountains out of sheer terror!
I leaned against the tree and laughed heartily it frightened the birds around me, who seemed to fly off laughing themselves! I was almost brought to tears through the relief and absurdity of it all! A doll, here of all places! In
I stole myself away
[incomplete]
'She was a shrew' he coughed turning his arched back to me, though not angrily, 'She died of cancer, of course' he was gazing out beyond the crude fly-net that separated the grime of the window, the potted plants and white enamel flecked bench from the vast grey quadrate of his yard.
'She looked like an old dried prune, in the end. I did what could. I was patient, considerate, but these hands--' he lifted his shaking frail hand, 'they can not give life, they can only take it away- each man has these instruments of death; yet it takes two to create life... perhaps that's why the lonely kill... as a payment, a sort of equal sacrifice'
'You killed her?' I asked []
'Oh, no!' he laughed, 'In fact, she's buried right over there, beyond the broken elm; as the shadow breaks from the workhouse' he began to clutter around in a drawer searching for a sharpened tool to perfect the talus of a fingertip.
'That is...', he said as he slammed the drawer shut, running his hands shakily through his thinned hair, 'That is... she used to be...'
Perhaps, it was the frustration of my probing that unnerved him, but still I looked on him sternly enough, letting him know I wasn't going anywhere.
'You see, we get a lot of mountain wolves around here... I stood my ground for a little while' he looked up at me with his blue eyes, 'but when it started to get cold, well I- ....I suppose by now, they've dragged her up the Chambreyon'
'God!',
'No, not God he has forgotten Les Thuiles, as you have perhaps noticed there is not a single chapel or paster for miles, not until you hit Jausiers, else I would of given her a proper burial; but it's the way of nature, if it wasn't the wolves, it would be the worms, and Jacob... why choose one animal over the other? that's how I eventually saw it; so I let the bastards have her...'
'Philip...' I said resting my hand on his shoulder sympathetically, his threadbare cardigan was warm and coarse, 'Look, I've got all my mountain gear right here, as soon as I'm feeling better, I'll-- '
'You won't get better!' he looked up at me sharply, 'There is no ladder for you this time; no half naked fight with the name-giver and no namesake to win through confer';
Admittedly, I was taken aback, but this was not the first time he had confused me somebody else, there was no anger in his voice, and it was spoken very factually. I had come to realise this old man, this doll maker of Ubaye Valley, and so I was resolved to reassure him, feeling that it was spoken was out of fear, so I said, 'It's nothing more than mountain sickness, I know this illness, it'll pass, it always does- a slight fatigue that's all, why do you thi nk I won't recover Philip?'
'I can't tell you, as the meaning is beyond me, and i f the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch...'
'It had taken me seven long years to work my way out of that ditch... I won't go in there again...' he sighed heavily, and like a detached lump of wood swung his artificial leg from beneath the desk, and as he patted this cellophane and cork monstrosity, he said 'See, it has my leg! let it keep it. The rest of me stays here-- with my angels... my '
Alas, I nodded to signify I understood (which I've come realise over time is all the unhealthy truly desire - understanding-... even false understanding- as I once again dismissed this as the ramblings of insanity). But what did fascinate me was h is preoccupation with these dolls, which I realised (given their predominate female form), signalled sexual frustration and a vast loneliness I had never before encountered.
As he resumed his craft before that sun drenched window, I could see the dedication in his eyes, and the love he poured into every stroke and carve of the scalpel, an intricate design, imperfect to all but the creator. These poseable 'angels', naked and mutilated as they were, some with legs for arms, others without torsos, and every possible transmutation of limbs beyond the Lord's intended image, seemed to assemble around the workshop, standing in union as if to decry perfection, and the form of mankind itself as unnatural.
I left Philip to his work, and wondered around that untidy annex, with my hands clasped behind my back, a studious and naive scholar; I was struck by the beauty of the life-like immobiles, that like the Sanhedrin or the monuments of the Erechtheum encircled the room with a cryptic wisdom of their own. The products of madness and divinity, that was so well orchestrated in their expression, you can not help but have a real sense of death, a questioning of perception and the human psyche- what it is to possess and comprehend the human form!
Was this what Philip was trying to achieve, out here in the snow blasted hamlet of Les Thuiles? I doubted it, he seemed motivated by a personal anguish; [] and so I asked him why it was, if he loved his 'angels', that he left them outside, littering the forestry, discarded and uncared for.
'The mere presence of all forms' he later said, 'Can serve a purpose, as they mark the roots of their genesis by a desire to discard it, just as humankind has spread his seeds to the four winds, and seeks life on new shores, my angels, those which go against the grain of their intended inheritance, are cast outside, to serve a new purpose and to seek their fate by other means'.
And so it was.