RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 31/10/05

Out into some nebulous place, literally and suddenly shrouded in fog – La Pineta and beyond – a forgotten zone again, haven’t really experienced one in the whole time I’ve been in Italy – the place was a recycling plant on the edge of a small town, edged with low-rise industrial buildings that had each seen better days – the sun a pale white disc through the fog, visible but without any power – a small wooden hut at the entrance from which a young woman dressed in a poorly fitting black uniform and piped with red and gold appeared, she spoke permanently into a mobile phone to someone (Her boyfriend? Her Mother? God perhaps?) and just signaled to us with her hands indicating what we should do and where we should go – from out of the mist lines of old refrigerators and cookers all deposited and left along the border between the site and the wasteland beyond; huge blue waste deposit skips; pieces of wrought iron – then scavenging men appear from between the skips, their faces deep lined, ages unclear, they haul and heave at certain things like king sized mattresses and other bits of household material – the woman in the official hut ignores them and keeps talking into her phone as if that conversation id keeping her in touch with the rest of the world and once it is over she herself will become a permanent part of this place, unable to return, the fog closing in around her and shrouding any way out, parts of her scavenged by the crow like men, or else holed up in her hut waiting for the end.