My week in Matera was one of yellow dust, balmy nights, a silver river cutting through a
crust of earth. Cobblestones worn back as far as the ice-age (slippery). A city of traces,
everywhere. A sweaty stumble down and then up, across the way, to stand in the caves of
Matera’s ancestors. In light, air-conditioned classrooms with electrical sockets under all of
the folding tables, we participated in writing workshops given by teachers representing
different countries, some of whom had sat on our side of things in a previous year. In the
city’s archeological museum where we had our awards ceremony at the end of the week, lie
the remains of a giant whale fossil. Traces.
Time felt a bit like a wave that week. A wave out on open water, expanding and contracting
and then, suddenly gone. I grew so familiar with a university corridor that was not my own.
(I had just submitted my thesis at the time, and this made me even more reflective.) It felt
like my roommate and I were strangers for only a few hours. We became close with the girls
with who we shared the house, classes, and nearly all of our pasta, pizza, pasta, pizza meals.
We try to keep in touch, now. I spent more time with them that week – these very brilliant
people, plucked from different parts of the world – than I spent with some of my best
friends this whole year.
I became particularly aware during my time on the course of my relationship to language.
It’s a subject I’ve been thinking about a lot these past few years. English is like a first
language to me, whereas it was not for my classmates and most of my teachers. To hear
their writing, teachings and shared stories expressed through a language that was not their
own, (but what makes a language ‘belong’ to someone?) made me appreciate the ease with
which I could experience these workshops. And even though I can’t read them, I look
forward to seeing their texts on the page, in their original forms.
At the end of a week of water, it’s like you’re made more aware of everyone going back to
their own lives – to law school, to German grammar classes, to teaching, to working. I went
back to Ireland and started a full-time job packing online orders for a craft shop. I am finding
it difficult to write at the moment. The season of whales seems far away.