Lost forever

Imagine the garigue at night. You can. You are capable of cosmic consciousness. In your mind, you can travel in space and time and you deal with infinitely complex abstractions in your daily life. You do. You are human, that's all it takes. For many it may be just a matter of retrieving a memory; for others, the anticipation of an experience yet to come.

Imagine the moonlight. Beyond the rounded hillock, it shimmers over the water like hammered silver. With no artificial light to create any deeper darkness, the moon lights your path. You can actually make out the colours of rocks and plants.

The sounds are different and the aroma is carried in the evening dew. If you sit quietly you are likely to be convinced that the place has a busy nightlife you never imagined it had. To the uninitiated the rustle and scuttle may be a mite disconcerting. Sitting silent and immobile in the middle of nowhere, you can let it all be itself, a complete, self-sufficient wilderness at your feet.

It is there every day, every night. You never imagined that you had so many neighbours, these islands' first inhabitants, still around after thousands, maybe millions of years. It is quite fitting that you should sit there in the dark since you are in the dark anyway, night or day. This simply makes you more aware of the fact of your almost endless ignorance of the cycles of life running all around you. The more you know, the greater the awareness of your ignorance.

Upwind of you a series of noises tells of a larger creature. A rat? Not a snake. You know that it's bigger than that. You are not alone. You try not to breathe. It's a hedgehog, the first you have seen not squashed flat in the road. It has surprisingly long legs. You are so close that you can catch the glint of moonlight in its eye. Why does it feel like magic? Why do you feel blessed by the sight of a wild creature?

You have only just arrived, it must be a matter of minutes and yet something has happened to time. It is a complete irrelevance. This place has seen no change for a million years. It doesn't need a watch.

It has seen the first Maltese come ashore and it did not mind. It has belonged to every empire that has dominated the Mediterranean throughout history and did not worry one little bit about it. Its pace never changed. Only people changed and they too were a complete irrelevance.

The bats are out. Aerial warfare against the empire of flying insects. We call them night butterflies (friefet il-lejl) in Maltese and they flutter across the moon with the evanescence of their eponyms. Wherever do they rest during the day? No Maltese could ever place them in a vampire tale. They are no threat at all.

There is no dangerous creature out here. Even the snakes keep their venom for their prey and not for larger creatures they could not possibly eat such as yourself. They can only poison what they have already half-swallowed. In fact there is only one threat out here.

There is a very great danger that you could meet someone you have been trying to avoid for a long time: yourself. Malta offers no other wilderness. Everywhere else is noisy, full of distractions. At work or play we jostle one another endlessly. We seem to do everything in crowds, with an extraordinary expense of energy. Out here you are alone. Alone with yourself and an unusual peace. For a while you can enjoy the illusion that you are all alone on the island.

Not everybody can handle it. As the blanket of timelessness wraps itself around you, the skyline of your own life stands out in sharp silhouette. You could find yourself teetering between meaning and futility. You are shorn of all your defences, your distractions, the hysterical rush to nowhere. Here you are, breathing the metaphysical. Did I hear you say spiritual? Why does this place feel more sacred than any cathedral? Because it is poorer, richer, freer and uncontaminated by power? Because its Maker's mark is still there for all to see?

It can be crushing to realise how completely unimportant you are. There you are huddled on a rock in the middle of nowhere in particular, an irrelevance to this small place, let alone to the earth. You too are an insect, a bacterium and just one. In the fireworks display of humanity you are a speck, your life the briefest spark.

Before you vanish altogether, you recall that you are witnessing your own redimension. Speck or spark you know that you are unique, that you have a place in all this and that you have your time, flash or flicker as it may be. You know. You know and are ignorant. But you can learn. You may even let your intuition tell you of what you can never hope to learn. Your potential is immense. Have you made the most of it?

How long have you been here? Hours or just a moment? Your bottom tells you it has been quite a while. You decide that it is time to leave and as you straighten up, you realise that you have acquired an inner peace. None of your problems is solved but you can face up to them all much better than before. There is less anxiety in your bones even if your joints feel stiff. You are able to manage it all.

Your car awaits you at the end of the track. As you turn the key you are conscious of the toxic cloud you leave behind. You never thought of that before. Why does it feel like a desecration? Soon enough you are back in civilisation, another dimension. The chase is on again. Life goes on but you tell no one of your time in the wilderness. It cannot be shared. It is your link with nature across time. It is what gives you a sense of proportion in the chaos of daily life. Sometimes you feel that this is what keeps you sane. The best things in life are for free and very intimate.

Then you read that somebody is selling them all off, for golf. For golf? In a sacred desert? What the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Arabs, the Byzantines, the Normans, the Swabians, the Angevins, the Aragonese, the Spainish, the Knights, the French, nor even the British ever thought of doing will be done by one man. He will change the place forever. Today's Prime Minister feels he has the authority to turn the place into a golf course. Can he ever be made to understand his own epochal transgression? Will it happen in time? What will you do about it? Yes, you. Now, before it is all lost forever. Just tell someone, anyone of the power of the place. Decide to discover it. Take your children and grandchildren walking there. Do it, before it is all gone for good.

The dead are long gone and future generations are still unformed. Of all who breathe today, it falls to today's Maltese to save this place and of them all you bear a major burden. You know.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt

hcvassallo@kemmunet.net.mt