As I began...

As I began the undertaking of this project I found myself buried under an avalanche of all it is I don't know. I found I had to feed my imagination with volumes of information so that I might find my way to that yesterday, to that then of used old days.
I began that process. As I download facts, my mind ruminates like a cow with its cud, over and over again to retrieve every ounce of nutrition each blade of grass, each page, has to offer.
Then suddenly, one fine day, I find I have unwittingly slipped into yesterday through a fleeting portal strewn amongst today's never-ending rhythms. The brief reminder of the past, alive and unchanged today. There! Did you see? You only have to slow down one little bit and you too will find it. Reflections of yesterday today, they are all around us.
In that portentous fragrance the breeze sends us to warn of an improbable burst of summer rain dancing amid sunrays. They smelled it too. And the chirping of the river as it crisply hops down the rocks.
The timeless love making between mountain and cloud. The triumphant racket of dominoes shuffled in the shadows of a Sunday afternoon, and the good-natured banters between the won and the lost. I can feel it, the eternity, in the errant gazes of men lingering on the street corner, the street vendor's song , the clip-clop of hooves, the firm hand shakes and rampant hopes before the cock fight. The fragrant stoking of the anafe. the mockingbird's melody.
Brooms of oregano twigs sowing pungent innocence on the doorstep of a country afternoon. The ting of the anvil, the oh so very green of the parrots, and sunsets of white egrets flocking to bed at the riverside's forest. This sight, this sight, of winding winter nights, of shedding the somewhere of what once was is here today among us all, that yesterday is, offering us her hand and a step backwards to search for the ever so slight portals of tomorrow back then.