A Compelling Place
(The Port of
Azores)
The road leading up the hill to a spacey panted
village, which seemed to be spread out from the foot of a hill above me to
circling the top of the hill and then downward, served as the center of the
town-let. Here donkeys were unloaded, and small cargoes sorted for delivery to
whomever, if indeed there were merchants farther up the mountain, or down the
other side. I was left alone, as I climbed the heart of this peak that extended
out of the Atlantic Ocean, as if it belonged to the tips of Atlantis,
whispering awe to my alternate mind, of the mysterious volcanic ridge
underneath it. I looked beyond the limits of the town-let and the mountain peak
itself, and saw between the hills, the colorful sun reflecting off its Atlantic
waters, it was 1976. As I turned about I found myself facing a speeding car
coming down the dusty and hard dirt roadway, a sporty kind of car. The car
stopped and I heard a sweet peremptory voice asking, “Are you intended for the island?”
I turned to find myself facing a lovely, good-looking woman stout woman, with
long black hair, in colorful clothing.
“I live here in a dwelling on top of the
hill,” she replied, “did you just come in from the plane at the airport below
at the military airbase?” Come the woman’s additional reaction, with a gesture,
to the curious moment.
I stood there in a kind of bewilderment,
ignoring the question, “Come” she said, “I’ll give you a ride down the
mountain?” But I was going up the hill.
She then noticed me being a stranger with no luggage, must have figured
I was taking advantage of the short delay in the refueling of the jet that just
had landed at the small U.S. Airbase below us.
“My name is Sergeant Chick Evens,” I
said, “and yes, I’m just kind of went sightseeing on my own as the plane
refuels.”
“People fall of this cliff-road, you
must be careful as you reach the top it gets narrower, but by the time you do,
the plane will be long gone!” She reminded me.
From what I could see, it all was a
tightly knit town that stretched from the near summit to its outer rim or boarder,
which being the top of the hill, or the peak of the elevation. And then perhaps proceeded down the other side
of the prominence until it coiled around the hill to the back of the airport.
And I wanted to stay for some odd reason, negotiate with the young lady, whose
face showed deep thoughts, trying to dig into mine.
I was twenty-nine years old then, she
was not much older, if not younger. And so I did get in the car, and she drove
wildly down the road, and all the other good places I had known become
disconsolate for that brief moment in my life.
I had wished within that flash and breeze of the moment, to have made
myself a part of the brotherhood of this most desolate, and mostly uninhabited,
compelling place.
As I sat on the plane heading to
Germany, a simple explanation was received into my alternate mind in silence,
as if left there by the woman of the Port in the Azores, to forever ponder,
received as if by clairvoyance, in a long moment of hesitation, marked by her deep-rooted
eyes, which seemed to express the quiet exaltation of the town— And I seemed to
carry fugitive thoughts; the island had
a kind of intellectual power far surpassing others I had been on—so I felt at
the time, and I had wondered, and still do wonder if I could have held a place
amongst them.
No:
1031/11-5-2014
