Dada 91

We would be drenched but it would break the gathered heat. At one point, we walked over a section of road that had just been resurfaced. The sun had burned and blistered the tar. Our feet sank down into it, exposing its shimmering soft mass. What had been exposed to the sun was then just as quickly opened to the rain as it began to fill it with puddles. This is our life here; driven mad by what is both given and denied us.

The priest began to sing. He suddenly produced yellow robes the colour of saffron. Just visible above the hearse, the driver`s hardened leather hat looked as if it had been moulded from the same black material as the bitumen.Rain drops fell down from the brim onto his shoulders. I felt a bit lost standing between the early sun and now the leaden sky and the relentless darkness of these other colours in the yellow light: the sticky black of the water, the sodden road , the dull blue of the mourning clothes, the shine of the hearse, the red flowers that robbed me of my bearings.

The sun, the rain, the smell of leather and wet grass clung to the wheels of the carriage. A smell of sandalwood and incense assaulted my nostrils. The exhaustion from not having slept all night stung my eyes and blurred my thoughts. I turned around again: the doctor looked very far away, fading into a cloudy haze of steaming heat until he appeared as blurred as a mirage before my eyes. When the rain came it washed away  the vision of the Dada. He no longer appeared through the folds of the earth.