OUT THERE EVERYTHING

Chapter Four - Le Petit Paradis

CHAPTER FOUR

LE PETIT PARADIS

You go along following some obscure thought, listening to people and then sometimes you remember why you are here.  I am the reincarnation of an Egyptian Prince from the deserts of Egypt.  I know this, so I am telling you.  I am called Angar El Fasid Flambo.  I was born into a family of horse thieves who eventually stole so many horses that the people began to grudgingly take them seriously.  Respect them or else you were likely to wake up in a bloodied bed with your prized donkey's testicles resting under your chin.  Ahh, but that is another story and it only happened a few times.

I can run long distances with little or no water and I am like a camel.  I carry all my possessions and nourishment on my back.  I have live through sandstorms so thick, the locus give me kudos.  I once was buried in a sand dune for six days and nights with my horse Shirlad El Ackbar and we both drank out of some skin water sack I hung around my neck.  We survived by covering our mouth and nostrils with fine mesh towels used to wrap figs and cheese that we had obtained at the oasis.  At the end of six days and nights we crawled out into the sand land, and made our way forward following the night constellations until we reached the medieval city of Sarazo.

Sazazo is a walled city like all ancient outposts.  The city has four gates.  If you enter the south gate you will be entering the area controlled by the Tribe of Anallum who are known as The Archers and Master craftsmen. 

If you enter Sarazo the walled city through the West Gate, you will come upon the copper and clay merchants, the finest utensils built for cooking around the fire used in the homes of the brilliantly privileged, the writers and the scribes from the temples. 

If you enter Sarazo through the East Gate, you will smell the fresh grass and hay mixed with dung from the horses.  The fierce Tribe of Dontory controls all the horse trade, and every year at least a dozen horses and riders compete in the hundred-mile race across the desert.  Usually one of the riders from the Dontory Tribe takes back home the grand prize and the smaller prizes of second and third go to others in the tribe and are worth tens of thousands of dinars.

Entering Sarazo by the North Gate you can feel the heat of the forges and hear the clanging of the metal being hammered and tapered into the hardest of steel.  Spears and swords are made and tested by this warrior Tribe called Bodoor.  The swords and spears are highly coveted by all who purchase them as they are said to give the bearer, unusual strength and almost mystical powers.

I was here for one reason, known only to Shirlad El Ackbar and myself.  I whispered in his ear as we rode along.  "This is our time, and this is our race."  We will slay all the competition and leave them eating our dust.  At the end of the race we will be rich and as famous as the greatest Sheiks.  So rich, we will never have to care about working or having the shadow of a master leaning into our doorways, waking us up from wine drenched sleep and dreams and beautiful women.

The highway leading east along the north shore is as rugged as the day is long and runs over sunlit brassy knolled hills sloping down into the cold blue St. Lawrence River, and if you follow it like the earliest explorers did, it would take you to the Atlantic Ocean.

There were quite a few folks traveling the roads this year.  There was music everywhere when I heard the strains of the Quebecois group Harmonium being played by this pair of musicians.  They not only played the music, they played it with their souls and had a caravan of followers always around them.

It was here that I heard the first whisper of "Le Petit Paradis".  If you hitchhiked a bit further up the road and got off at a road sign marked 14 Nord, and followed it up until you reached the second gravel driveway, you would find it.  After that you needed to walk across the grassy field where the forest opens up before you, parted like a bridge between two worlds, and on the other side was a well-worn trail, tracked and worn by the passing of many feet.

Having found the trail and with my blue Canadian Tire aluminum knack sack on my back, I followed the trail for about half a mile until I could hear the rushing of water and the sound of laughing voices.  Laughing voices wafted through the dappled tree leaves left by shafts of sunlight as I reached the rocky cliff edge.

Before me flowing over the rocks, a waterfall descended into a misty pool that was Le Petit Paradis, crowded with teenagers and young people naked as the day they were born.  Some were high up squatting on the rocks, others were standing on the edge ready to make a leap of faith into the misty pool far below.  Beautiful girls and tanned guys were basking in the afternoon summer sun.  The Quebecois culture was so relaxed and open and it seemed I had walked back to Eden.

I said salute to a few people and they returned the greeting with open smiles.  I took off my old gold converse running shoes and stripped off my T-Shirt and shorts.  I watched for a while the frolicking and jumping off the rocks.  It looked like a pure adrenalin rush being suspended in the air for what seemed like endless seconds and then disappearing into the pool of water below.  It didn't seem like a huge pool upon closer inspection, but it seemed to be deep enough.  Heights are not something I am fond of, but I bit my lip, did a few false lunges digging my toes into the rock and pushed off feet first into the warm air currents that did not hold me up as I flapped my arms before plunging into the cold blue pool in a frenzy of bubbles with nothing to stop me.  I went down, down through the liquid particles and didn't reach bottom to my comic sense of relief.  The bubbles exploded around me in complete silence of this underwater world.

I looked up towards shimmering light of the world above me swimming up towards the sun until I broke the surface, flipping my hair back over my head and down my back.  What a wonderful sensation.  I could not help myself but to climb back up the rocks to the highest part of the cliff and do it again and again.  I nimbly climbed the rocks like a Billy goat forgetting my fear of heights.  I was looking around to see if I could make some sort of connection with anyone, but everyone seemed to be alone together.  This is something about me.  When I play music people seem to be attracted to me like magnets.  I am able to have a conversation, first through music like using my harmonica, and then it might flow into bits of conversation.  When I am not playing music, it seem that I am completely anonymous or completely invisible.  I don't know why exactly, but I seem to make myself smaller so that I can listen and observe or I try to blend in.  I can't tell you how many times people have come up to me and asked for directions because they think I am from that place, when I am actually just visiting for the first time.  I also pick up dialects quite easily mixing different geographic regional words into conversation.  So, people think I may be from Southern California or I could be from Tennessee or Wawa, all the places I have visited.

I floated on my back down the river and came upon three women swimming together, floating on their backs with their ample breasts pointed towards the clouds.  I said salute and hoped they were thinking lustful thoughts, thoughts of attacking me, forcing me underwater, all three of them with their breasts squished against my mouth, their legs intertwined with mine while their hands reached for my stiff shaft below my waist.  It would not have been a fair fight, but thoroughly enjoyable, and it didn't happen.

People were talking and smoking on the rocks so I drifted into the circle.  It opened letting me in.  We exchanged a little information about where we were from and where we might be going.  I heard that the Gaspe Peninsula was a beautiful rugged place and I needed to see it.  I could continue up the north coast if I wanted to go that way.  I think I would have to cross the big river at Trois Rivieres.

Stayed all day swimming, lingering around.  Some couples would go off into the woods to make love.  No one in particular really seemed to connect with me and I don't like hanging around crowds for too long.  It was time to move on. 

Walking back along the forest trail, I could see shafts of light from the late afternoon sun streaking in and out of the gently swaying leaves, the light caressing the ground.  All around me the earth seemed to glow.