Going To the Well

There’s an upheaval outside. A wolf at the door. The new regime feels like a terrible school play about some ancient regime. Ivan the Terrible meets Vlad the Impaler, or the day Sparta overtook Athens. The air is full of Zuck and Muck. 

I could rant or I could chant. I choose a silent chant, not to seethe but to drown the noise with memories and visions, a wordless montage of intimacies; that persistent light near midnight in Connemara or the chronicle embedded in driftwood off the Cambrian coast or that first exchange of gifts…roots of a ficus for the stump of a live oak with new life springing. Even a dirge contains notes to be moved around the mulberry bush. We all fell down and got up again.

My instinct is to go to the well, to fill up on those values which comprise our ethos, those simple acts rooted in any overlooked day that affirm our humanity.

I watched a movie from way back, available on Kanopy. In the Argentinian Brazilian film, Found Memories, seemingly little action takes place. Yet the sum of it could be an antidote to the breaking news that is breaking our hearts.

It is like a visual poem depicting a few people in a rural Brazilian town, with glacial pacing, transporting the viewer into the spatial and temporal life of the town folks. The indoor scenes, in particular, have the feel of stepping inside a painting by the Dutch masters. 

The setting is a town occupied by near-ghosts, elderly folks, who have forgotten how to die. The gate to the cemetery is locked. The village café owner says he is not unhappy enough to be dead. Their existence is simple, reverent and communal. Madalena, well on in years, is shown kneading the dough for bread each morning and carrying it in a basket along railroad tracks almost grown over from disuse. Part of the daily ritual is her insistence on arranging the loaves on the shelf of Antonio, the shop owner, followed by his immediate removal of the bread. The playful jockeying between the two closely resembles affection. He then makes coffee which they take outside with a roll. It has the feel of a secular communion, wine and wafer.

The town folk are clearly living in the past, holding fast to memories of their loves and regrets as if time has been halted. Madalena writes nightly letters saving her emotions for her dead husband. When a young photographer arrives, routines are hardly ruffled, so quietly is her presence registered. Almost imperceptibly she insinuates herself into Madalena’s household. At one point she remarks, I’ve never heard so much silence.

The aged Magdalena’s old photos seem to merge with the recent ones developed by the character of the young woman. Out of this linkage a conflation of the two worlds emerges as well as a bond between them. When the time comes, Rita, the young woman is asked to assume the baking of bread which has taken on a spiritual dimension. 

More impactful than the memories, are the rhythms of quotidian lives captured by the filmmaker. She reminds us of the small miracles beneath the surface of what first seems like withered lives. Let us not wither but revere our enduring verities and each other.