coast | Open Platforms

I don’t always have material to write about so don’t like to write unless I’ve something new and meaningful to share; thankfully I’ve got something for this month’s post. I recently spent some time in Genoa Italy – which I found enchanting, beautiful, but with a shade of sadness within the town and its streets. I can’t put my finger on it, but some kind of ache for feelings and people past, got into my skin. It is also a place where time can stand still if you let it even though at times it is a fast place with people rushing about. But head out into the restaurants, coffee shops, the harbour with its views if you climb high enough, and the coast, and you are transported to a different time and level.

My fascination is with a statue in the rock at Monterossa, on the Cinque Terre (meaning Five Lands):

Bombs and harsh seas have reduced the giant man, ‘Il Gigante’ to an armless, over-powering figure keeping watch over the sea. He is Neptune, built in 1910. It was designed and built by Arrigo Minerbi, a Jewish Italian sculptor who had works in several cathedrals. In 1937 he was forced into hiding due to his Jewish ancestry. The statue is far from timid and shows its strength in its ruin – it is a ruin yes but its beauty is in its decay – it retains its watchful and perceptive eye on humanity. Is he holding up the world, and suffering as a result?

As I write this I can’t help but think of this figure as the ‘Ecce Homo’ – ‘Behold/Here is the man’ – which is especially poignant at Easter. The figure is not a personal one but nor is it removed from us. It is a human and we can identify with this. It is solid, yet at times, probably crumbling. Like our fragile world, and its people.

I was also interested in the writing on the walls in the streets in Genoa – in its alleyways mainly. Again there are links with my feelings for the giant – the words in the photo below mean ‘we are dead to the dead’ and ‘we have lost our meaning/centre’. Powerful and worrying words. If this is the case, this is tragic. Have we? What meaning do we have in our lives?

I leave you with the image of The Man; weak and strong at the same time, like us all, and always vulnerable.

It’s been a topsy-turvy year for me and I’ve not been able to write as much as I would have liked. I’ve also realised that it’s sometimes nice to write about something that is outside of yourself, so that is what I am going to do now.

I visited Bend, Oregon, in October and November of this year. It is amazing landscape – expansive, at times mystical and bleak, and at other times epically uplifting – especially where there are llamas concerned!

The area is known for its mountains and sleeping volcanoes. To visit an area that has been an area of active volcanoes is to feel that you are at the end of the world; it is the land that time forgot or rather a land that has been left as it was when the eruption happened:

I was really taken into the emotional heart of Bend when I visited the High Desert Museum, which features wonderful insights into the wildlife, geology and people of the area. I was particularly moved by ‘Snowshoe’, the rescued Lynx. He was found wondering starving and close to death in California. He had been taken in by people wanting to use him as a pet, and to make him harmless they had de-clawed and de-toothed him. They got tired of him and realised he wasn’t what they were looking for so released him back into the wild (with no teeth or claws to survive). I don’t know whether to call this ignorance, evil or stupidity, or a combination of all three. It is certainly glaringly obvious that wild animals are wild animals, not for domestic use. The museum now keep him in his own natural sanctuary – since he is now unable to look after himself in the wild; keeping him safe and fed in an enclosure is the kindest act humans can now do. Visitors to the museum are generally disgusted and sad at how he was treated in order to fulfill someone’s need of a pet – he is now an exhibit but only because humans left him that way. He is now at least admired and respected.

Snowshoe

I have seen many sunsets in America – they can be beautiful anywhere in the world. Here is one above the city of Bend:

Finally – for this area of central Oregon, I adored Smith Rocks Park. It’s one of those places you could stare at forever and you wish that you didn’t have to face the world outside it: