The Trip

It was supposed to be a trip for work. We went to film the president visiting a patriotic camp. He never arrived. It was the August war 'anniversary'. We waited the whole day for his spontanious decision to appear there, at the place that was burnt down last year during the war. The spontanious decision was never made. It was mostly cloudy and I sat at the beach. The waves were dark and the space was unlit. A guy was teaching a girl with big boobs how to swim. They were the same height and standing in the water touching their bellies he had grabbed both of her arms and would not let them go. The girl's face was serious, pretending to be frightened of depth of the water. The flirtation was so concealed but yet so obvious.

Then there was the evening sun. The light was warm and colorful.

No sun the next day. The whole morning, up until late afternoon we sat on a balcony talking this and that and even drank wine. I discovered a fantastic park in Zugdidi where I wanted to run in the mornings and drink coffee in the afternoon in a construction that I pretended would be a cafe, but is a run down shack now. Trees were tall and dirty ponds looked wild. The pond remimded me of a film, where a family - three kids and their parents swim in a village pond and it is frighteningly calm and quiet there.

In this region, Mingrelia, every second person wears black clothes, a sign of grief. It seems the war ended last year there. The grievance is such a big part of this culture. The cemetaries along the road and none behind each of them. A long row of large cemetaries overlooking the road. A car driving up to a dozen drunk man shouting out with joy seemed part of this grief, as if they were all about to die.

We were on the road again and I referenced Jack Keruak's 'On the Road' all the time. Even though I don't like the spirit of that book, it did influence me in a way in freeing the road. Cracking nuts in the back we drove through Guria and then to Imereti and then, after a night, after getting lost on a village road, but freeing a cow that had its head stuck in a wired fence, we hit the road towards Tbilisi - the end of the trip.