Antarctica

Walking back after work, I cross il Campo de' Fiori (literally the flowers' field) where is the market. Around 6:30pm, once dustmen have cleaned it, the pavement is still wet and slippery. One needs to walk on it as one walks on ice : puting the foot flat on the ice and lifting it pushing onto the sole, keeping the weight in the center of the foot, right under the shinbone. Above all avoiding to push on the tiptoe because it would risk to displace your support and cause your fall. I'm playing at dreaming up I'm walking on a lake of black ice.
I'm walking on a lake, the wind comes and caress my face, it's not cold yet. People going by are like a mist which wraps me, brushing me without destabilizing me, an uprising fog or clouds going down to cover the plains. The icy stretch of my lake is getting smaller and smaller ; already, water it's not solid anymore, it leaves the ice and flows in its bed. I jump on more secure rocks. Cars are streams which splach me with their exhaust gaz, grumbling as a river in flood. My rocks bring me to the middle of the street ; I just have enough time to jump off of it and the rectangular pebbles of the zebra crossing are carried away by the flow.
The ridge of the sidewalk becomes the line of a snowdrift : on the left side, to the south-west, the gentle slope of the névé brings me into the mist, on the other side, on the north face, the snowdrift crumbles above the emptiness. Cars become squalls which brush me and almost make me fall. The wind is now cold, I'm walking gently on this layer of snow become ice. I'm thinking at white stretches of Antarctica where the sun doesn't set down anymore.
This summer again, American earthwork contractors are building up a road to reach the South pole. They are going to colonise some of the last parts of Earth that almost nobody has walked on it. This part of Earth we are not adapted to live on. Why do American people always need to do such things?...
Erratum, the project since has been signed by signers of the Antarctic Traity, so France. Stupid Frenchies...

ciao

yvan

http://www.asoc.org/media/11.27.04.Stuff.Hillary.htm

http://subs.nzherald.co.nz/location/story.cfm?l_id=2&objectid=10384923