Within Your Hands Reach, Old Chenar

A view from my window taken during another moment

Looking out through the window glass next by the wash basin with the water tap running both hot and cold water, thanks for French government’s kindness, I have rather poignant views today different from my last post (You Old Chenar). The day has been drowsy, overcast and dribbling wet as the fallen dried brown-crisp leaves saturated, supple like infused leather could be. Yes, they are sticky too. I have to make sure to rub my boots well on the door rug (an oblong dark holed rubber patch set on the grilled part to make level with the floor) just inside the glass door activated by the magnetic device with the given keys. Now I find, as I have found, the new bald patch isn't

just like a scar of ringworm but a long strip. It has turned out to be like an afterthought-plan of road making connecting the major busy road. The stripping for the strip, broad enough for double-lanes, forms an arch more curving at one end at this side where I stay than on the other end beginning from the major road down. I take the usual road (Rue Jean Jaures) that runs by the simple dwellings on one side. It connects the upper point where the two directions meet just by the wooded rising part with the glass paneled bus stop cabin in the middle of the triangle part just down formed by the road diverging into two parts on either side of the raised part that seems to be rocky and connecting to the adjoining road with paces distance between. It is formed by the adjoining upper road closing the Y like diverging road. The cabin was always deserted but with a few heads so seldom. I can see a white bus parked just by the wood, maybe school bus of the high school nearby, on the adjoining road that ends its one direction up to the high school at the foot of rising wooded parts around. The other direction leads further to private dwellings at the bases of those wooded parts. But I don’t have to take the road to the upper part with the woods and parked bus but down towards the major road, which runs above the modest concrete steel structure and my road runs below it with the round concrete colonnade on either side supporting the structure.

Yesterday one more sophisticated machine arrived to strip the trees clean to make this view that I can see now. It had four large wheels, tractor wheels with ridges forming deep grooves, which carried the pyramidal glass cabin for the driver to monitor the gearing devices before him to operate the tusk like cutting device with the well-oiled supple joint working like a giant monster hand. The sophistication lay in this tusk like device, its top part especially like the most ferocious part. Its giant fingers could clutch the trunk of a tree from its base part, those whitish stubble now like white disks stuck on the dark muddy strip, and cut it clean in a second before chopping into feet long pieces. It snatched a trunk down like an elephant could do the branch of a tree with its tusk. More amazingly, it had other blades to clear the twigs on the upper shaft of a trunk. The cut pieces of wood were stacked on one side and the twigs with leaves on other side. The slippery machine sounds could be heard when its top robotic part swiveled for the right grip and switching blades.

So today the cut pieces of wood and twigs are no longer there.  The muddy dark strip now gives me the definite idea of its plan to connect between the major road down and the usual road up at the meeting point by the woods.

But what I see today isn't just the desolate view of the dark arching strip and white stubble of the cut trees. What I see today is the revelation of more simple dwellings that have been hidden till today. I can see the pale-brown tile-roofed dwelling by more down there from my window on the fourth floor. The dwelling was simple with no glass skylights as others on its ridge-roof with steep gables but a small chimney stack at one end of the roof-ridge. Its back part was just by the dark strip barricaded by the ragged hedge. There are two back windows with wooden shutters open suggesting the living quarters as the small one suggesting the kitchen. As I look closer, I see a man in a dark checked shirt and light-blue jogging trousers was walking on the small patch of lawn, which seems to be well-maintained, next by the dwelling. He looks like a boy in a cap but looking at his walking sticks, one whitish metal and the other dark wooden, he must be an old one with arthritis or rheumatism. He walks back and fro in a teetering gait. There was a young fir tree at one end of the green lawn. Its branches begin right from its base; must be for marking Christmas celebration.

The view is like a surprise to find such modest dwellings just nearby. The busy major road runs on the raised part just off the more simple dwellings now revealed. The glossy billboard on one side of the major road displaying changing images of glamour seems to be luring the hidden-revealed dwellings to come out. So they can’t hide now from its direct influence. But there is this quaint touch, as per my impression, as played by the one dwelling next by with a tail of pale-blue smoke rising up from its chimney stack hidden from me. The quaintness I find is not just the tail of smoke but its movement from the setting self-contained that reminds my childhood memories of seeing such signs from the roof tops. I tend to associate it with warmth despite the struggles within.