Rosanna By The River
Originating as a trickle halfway down a snow-capped mountain, a stream passes through a village - a twinkling film that barely covers the sediment beneath. Our setting is found further on. After the stream begins a river, and after the village comes a town. It is in this town that our protagonist lives, and it is beside the river, a little way down, that our story begins.
Here, the current is strong and the rumble of water resonates throughout the lush valley. There are rocks of different sizes dotted along the riverbank, which, from one side to the other measures about twenty metres. I am unsure of its depth, only that the bottom is further than I can swim.
It is the beginning of summer. An azure sky is pierced by the steely disc of white sun. There is a heat wave.The water is cool, but only now is it safe to swim in; within a month it will be awash with buoyant turds. At a gap between the high rocks is a flat plain, where, from a crack emerges an ice-cold spring, rushing into the river.
It is here that Rosanna chooses to sit. She is eighteen. When she is thirsty she places her small hands at the base of the spring, and cups them till they are full. The water is icy.
Rosanna comes here in particular because it is secluded and unfrequented. She always carries a book with her, but more often than not she finds herself listening to the river. Her mind is alert, but she is not necessarily in a state of contemplation. She understands the river intuitively. The water continually flows, but the river itself remains the same. Yet eventually it erodes away, so that only the Earth continues, till it too is no more.
Unconsciously, Rosanna becomes the river, and the river she. For with nothing to perceive, Rosanna would not be at all. Raised in a dark vacuum, without sound or light, nor anything to touch, one would remain asleep to life, without a sense of being. Thus we discover ourselves in the relationship between our body and its environment. And vice-versa, without our senses perceiving, surroundings may as well cease to exist--perhaps even they do. For now the river lives only in the mind of Rosanna, and you, the reader.
