I dream of rain

Some bits of what I'm about to write here I've recently discussed with both my dear friends Hugo and Sérgio, though not at the same time. We talked of a need to leave the life of the city behind, to move to somewhere where time seems to be standing still, a place of yesteryear, a place of a simpler and probably more rewarding kind of life. Maybe it's a place where the comforts of modern life do not abound, and maybe it's a place where it's sere geography will be a test unto itself. I don't know, it's a need I feel. These past few weeks I read up on and watched videos of some of the most unhospitable places on earth, some inhabited, some not. I saw videos that made me wish I lived on Pitcairn or in Tristan da Cunha, my fascination with Yukon and Alaska - some of it inherited from the works of Carl Barks, some of it from books like 'White Fang' and 'Into the wild - grew deeper, add to that my dream of spending the rest of my days in some far hill in Iceland, and that image so firmly etched in my mind of living in a near desert state took a further hold in my soul.
And then, because these things have a way of becoming true - in a sense - not only did I end up dreaming of these unknown deserts, but also in things I read, music I listened to, and memories I dredged up from god knows where, they started to permeate my days.

Let's begin with the reading, which will later link to the memories. Those who know me will know I am an avid comic book reader, and I read far too many comics, I read far too many comics whose quality is very questionable, but I also read a number of very good comics. Some are new reads - whenever I do find something new that's actually good - but most end up being re-reads of books I loved from years prior. One of those books that I return to every now and again is Craig Thompson's 'Blankets' and this past weekend I almost picked it up again but at the last moment I decided to read his 'Habibi'. I'm sure I've already written about it somewhere, sometime, but this was not a book I really enjoyed that much upon first reading. That's ok, that's actually normal with me - there are a bunch of things I didn't immediately fancy that ended up becoming very dear to me. And 'Habibi' gained a more special significance only around a year and a half or so ago. And it wasn't just because the book itself, no. Rather, it was because of a story dear Sérgio shared with me then that I would come to look upon the book with different eyes. All the things that I found boring - the esoteric bits dealing with calligraphy - became things that wholly engrossed me. It's a book I now read - in its 660+ pages - with great delight, and with a smile whenever I see this page right here:
An inescapable part of this story is the main character's life in the desert, a desert that seems almost timeless, as if plucked from some distant arabian tale, but is set in rather modern times. The desert - and finding love and sensuality in these austere conditions - brings to my mind a time when my younger self fell completely in love with 'Dune's Princess Irulan, as portrayed by Virginia Madsen in David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's 'Dune'. Me, as a kid, wanted nothing more for that world to be a real one, far more real than this one, and most of all - I wanted to be one of the fremen, with their blue-in-blue eyes, tinted thus from prolonged exposure to the spice Melange. I am very much looking to Denis Villeneuve's take on the story, and hopefully next year it'll be out for our viewing pleasure.
But thinking of 'Dune' also makes me think of music, not only Brian Eno's 'Prophecy' theme, but another song by way of 'Dune', without being explicitly so. Now, I' m not a huge Sting fan - I do like some of his older stuff - but because he was both Feyd Rautha in Lynch's 'Dune' as well as the inspiration to John Constantine, there's a song of his that I adore - 'Desert Rose'. It always seemed to me to be somewhat inspired on 'Dune', and I read somewhere years ago that Sting had confirmed it to be so.
From the searing heat of the desert, both that of our world and that of another, fictional world, my mind traverses far away to the biting cold of the north, to snow-capped mountains whose whirling winds whispers names of heroes and gods of aeons past. As my mind's eye surveys these distant, barren lands, looking from on high as if borne on the wings of a mighty eagle, from afar I sense the gentle padding of the wolves through the swirling snow, their baying a call that echoes deep in instincts honed from lifetimes ago. I glide through these lofty peaks, the chill wind willing me to live, and I dream, I dream a dream of white flurries, and warm hearths, I dream a dream of frozen rivers slowly thawing and skies of the whitest blue. I dream...