Primary Landscapes

The boulevard





Writing goes beyond the limits of the personal mark of this idyllic place, near my village.

Not more than three kilometers away, I felt that looking and calming down, to feel good, gives meaning to life, above all selfishly, to my life, in relation to my place.




The landscape is transformed, the light decreases a few meters before, the end is not seen. The bend in the distance makes me guess that it continues after. This feeling is repeated as the first time I met him, back in my eighth year.



The first trees, a little more knotty than the following ones, hold the buttress of branches, leaves and iridescent reflections that sneak between them, with the breeze. even though they are quite thick, the blue patches of any sunny or greyish sunset in which you make this walk flash, yes, higher up. Even in memories is one of the images that stand out in memory.



It comes to you suddenly, as an adult, what you have read, those places of epic romances with magical, disturbing or serene groves.



You compare novels, extraordinary narrative plots, you walk through love and adventure literature, but also through the dystopian tragedy of heroic and warlike emulations.

And so, in these daydreams you come close to the bend, which, like an ellipse, appears behind your footsteps as a robust tree or igneous column.



The story escapes me in the uncertain undulation of its cups, the rugged corpulence of its trunks, in the metallic colors of its leaves to the light.



In the sixth hour of the afternoon, next to that vertical rectangle of commemorative stone, we leaned to taste the water of the spring, that comes down from the tops, surrounded by grasses, autumn leaves and seaweed tangles. And like the story of the explorer, who arrives in clusters of thirst, quenching our desert palate, reminds us of his narrow journeys between hidden places of lost civilizations, while the egos of my image traverse art.



Satiated of tight waters, my eyes discover that heart carved in wood, that augurs an eternal adolescent love, imitation of the poetry that emptied reasons and suicides to great literary lovers.



There are few tasks left to continue in this grove. The afternoon has narrowed, the light is delimiting the profiles of the horizon beyond, where we imagine other robust forests of love, war and battles, which here are being light, around my little imagination.



Some houses can be seen near the end of this memorable avenue, which, like the magician's dwelling, will serve as a first conversation for questions of one's own history.

A little further will be that of the chronicler who tells romances and avatars of conquerors and villains, waving victories, loves and misgivings through this final valley.



We turn our gaze to the right, climbing, behind the shadow of the bitter thorns, the rocky and ferrous slopes are subject to the robust trunks of the oaks, to alleviate the asphyxiation, like earth, of the density of its layers and of the first heat of the centuries.

Seat and handle of horses and universal unicorns in the diffuse epic of the Middle Ages.



There is so much of me in this magical mall, that I remain absorbed for years, in the vain force of remembering it as a relief.



I return home thinking that someday, someone, administering resentment and politics, will cut down a few bends of these trees to let the pollution pass. Then I'll say goodbye!



And it will be nostalgia and imagination that will proceed to rebuild it.

INSTRUCTIONS

I would like you to establish a story in your primary landscape, that is, the place where you were raised. If, like me, you moved as a child, you choose the place where you spent the longest period, one that you can remember, that for me it would be the post-industrial city of Pennsylvania where I went to high school.

There are so many different types of primary landscapes on this planet. We live in dry and humid climates, we live on windswept hillsides or in the middle of cities drowned by traffic. Life in a small town is unique, but so is urban, suburban and rural life. All primary landscapes are interesting to the writer who lived there because the landscape is part of who he or she is.

The landscape of your childhood is in your DNA. You grew up listening to the accent, attending meetings, playing in the weather, being nurtured or alienated by cultural practices.

The list of writers who exploit their primary landscape again and again is long. Here is a brief list of some of the great American writers who kept (and some of them still maintain) going back to their more personal landscape, even if they also wrote about many other places.

• William Faulkner, Southern United States
• John Steinbeck, California central
• Annie Proulx, Wyoming
• Raymond Chandler, Los Angeles
• Sherwood Anderson, the Midwest
• Keillor Garrison, Midwest
• HP Lovecraft, New England
• Edith Wharton, Nueva York
• Flannery O'Connor, southern United States

One of my favorite writers of his primary landscape, and of place in general, is the great stylist John Updike. Updike passed away in 2009, but left numerous novels and story collections, as well as hundreds of poems and critical works. He wrote poignantly about his primary landscape, Shillington, Pennsylvania, in an essay called "The Dogwood Tree." Watch this clip to hear a writer explain how his primary landscape felt and why he kept coming back to him.

John Updike talks about "A Dogwood Tree: A Boyhood" (minute 3.44 to 8:52 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RApWC3Mn3UA . Note that I DO NOT want students to watch the entire program, that is old and rambling.)

It is especially important to send this task before the deadline, November 25 at 8:59 a.m. M. CET, because other people must rate it. If you send late, there may not be enough classmates to review your work. This makes it difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to produce a rating. Submit on time to avoid these risks