A couple of young lovers are walking in a storm

During one of those hours in the afternoon that already seems like evening or even early morning, I'm forced to park on the side of the road, to let the storm pass.
In a bucolic, surreal atmosphere that favors the romanticism and nostalgia typical of some films by Andrej Arsen'evič Tarkovskij, the pavement of the asphalt glitters like the scales of fish placed in the sun to dry, while the only light bulb that seems to lit day and night, sooner or later it will burn out as happened to the row of nearby lampposts.

This is the classic American country road with the hulks of old trucks and abandoned cars, a body shop. The road in question that I hear and see from behind a semi-fogged windshield gives me back a reasonable copy of a superimposed reality.
But for me, more authentic than reality.
The "magical realism" of Borges and Cortazar is already evident at these latitudes.

I see a couple of young people huddle under a colored umbrella: it is the dividing line between what is real and what is not.
Around the bend, in the direction I know the oil refinery is, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point these lovers found themselves in Comala (the fictional town created by Juan Rulfo in his novel Pedro Páramo), where the ghosts of our past coexist in harmony with the living. Forever.

Luke Periotto
Click
NP January 2023