guest post: born again Tweet

I long in my heart, sometimes, for the special feeling of early holidays spent in Pupaza.

I was slightly older and grownups started to trust me more. They were no longer desperately focused on keeping me away from harm and wrong doings... About that time I discovered a world which will forever encapsulate a part of me, or was it rather that I had finally made it home? Its name was fishing. A second degree cousin, if not third, whom I had met for the first time that summer, showed me how to build a fishing rod with local means. A reed, some thin, resistant thread, and the needle. It had to be a sewing needle.

I had a word with grandma. She owned a large, wide needle she couldn't part with. I had to make my way to the Cooperative and buy myself one. I knew where the Cooperative was, but I had never been there before. Grandma gave me two eggs and sent me away—barters were the thing back then; likely, the Cooperative had an acquisition plan for eggs and such. It was quite a walk on the sunny, dusty road, to end with a prize upon entering the Cooperative: shadow, chill, the smell of motor oil on the floor. In that dim light I first encountered the universal shop of the village world.

One could buy anything there: all kinds of tools, nails, wire, marmalade in wooden boxes, bags of salt and even condensed silage balls for animals, 200 liter barrels of cooking oil with their manual pumps, candles, sugar, rice, rubber shoes and so on. I gave them the two eggs, received a needle, and had to answer their questionnaire: who I was, whom I was staying with, and who my mother was. I think the eggs were priced function of size, because they had this circle wire with which they tried the eggs. I seem to recall a list of products priced in eggs, too; money weren't common in those days.

I then made it back home, heated the needle in the flame of a candle, bent it and went ahead to finishing my first fishing rod ever, catching the first fish ever, and getting this unique virus in my blood. Afterwards, I caught small fish every day (for the kittens!), I learned to tell them apart, I started to know their names and find more fishing spots. So my apprenticeship unraveled, seeing and doing, if not viceversa.

Beyond the fishing, however, came its atmosphere: waking up early, as light broke and the sun miraculously rose in the sky, digging for worms, walking to the river in the strong air of the morning, its fragrances and its sounds—the faraway ones, especially, had something that made one think about them all day long—and the sunshine on one's feet, bare and goosebumped in the chilly breeze.

Ever since, when in need of feelgood moments, I close my eyes and see myself, once more, in short trousers: carrying a fishing rod and hurrying to the river in the early morning. I feel the sun on my bare feet. I breathe in the smell of cattle sheds' garbage, the smoke of corn cobs fires, the perfume of grasses and weeds not seen before, or after. I see the cork float on the water, and feel the rod twitch in my hand as the fish struggles to escape the needle, and I want to go back there and be born again.


My dad, Mihail, taught me how to make a fishing rod when I was old enough to be trusted with a needle, and for a brief time I became fascinated with catching food with bare hands, more or less. I'm sorry to say that he doesn't fish nearly enough these days, and happy to add that he will likely retire by the perfect river in a few years. And maybe then I get to fish again myself.

While on holiday on a remote Philippines island, I gave the blog over to family and friends.