1 January 2010
Pingtung
There is a little enclosed garden space off the living room. The garden wall is covered with orchids, all types, hanging in little nets, their roots spreading along the tiling. Some have thick, long leaves and others small delicate ones. Roots climb along the spaces between the tiles, taking in moisture, feeding off the rich air.
Crystal skies are a rarity, the humidity is high year-round and frequently a light sea fog moves inland from early morning into the night. Nimbus clouds hang above the shrouded countryside. The sun is diffuse, its rays cut and weakened by hanging, microscopic bondings of hydrogen and oxygen.
There is a strange appositeness about the climate; in winter the atmosphere is like a cotton sheet that lightly covers and in the hot season it is a blanket that suffocates. What nurtures also consumes; mosquitoes flourish, termites feast on anything wooden, even concrete and steel cannot defeat this environment – the concrete becomes pitted and prematurely aged, the steel corrodes. New aluminum structures are soon covered with a patina of moisture and mildew that erodes the brightness of the metal, creating hoary monuments of even the recently constructed.
The orchids – and this time I have fooled myself (and, perhaps, you) because the seeming digression after the first paragraph above was not a digression at all but, rather, part of the point of this splurge of words – are compensation for the weather; they bloom, brilliantly effusive, long-lasting, apparently delicate but surprisingly hardy, giving us color, light and beauty in a small, exquisite package that can make the corner between walls a reason to reflect.
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