Needles

Every haystack has one.  Is it then the searching through the stack that brings us character?  Do we learn perseverance, patience, diligence, vigilance, and faith in the finger-tip blistering, hay-fever activating, back souring work of searching for small, sharp, one-eyed bits of steel among straw?  Does anyone come up from the heap, back pinched from long bending, head rushing at the sudden change in altitude, thin spike pinched between thumb and pointer finger saying “Yes, I found it!  I found it and it was worth it!  Now I can repair my trousers!”  

I don’t think so.  I don’t think its about repairing your trousers.  

When I first arrived in Albania, I saw them everywhere, every sight was rare and fresh, unexpected and mysterious.  I wanted to try every kind of food, wander down every road and alleyway, and meet the eyes of every stranger.  Today was like that again.  I was using my light filled eyes and my walking legs to seek out the glint of chrome hidden by chaff.  And I found enough to fill a pin-cushion.

Ervis and I called for a dumdum (a three or four-wheeled cab-over light truck with a simple box in the back and a humorous appearance) at about one in the afternoon today.  The driver took us to a machine yard for rebar, cement, and welded-wire mesh.  The yard also had a number of offices, fabrication shops, and a scrap yard.  Old, long-since-treasured earth movers and 18 wheel tractor trailers stood silently face to face like machines unearthed after a natural disaster had rendered them to the fossil record.  Men used giant claws at the end of rectangular steeled telescoping arms to lift high the remnants of once beautiful machines.  

The clouds here are beyond description, made more beautiful I am certain for endless reach going up, up, up.  The mountains too seem endless as the horizon breaks over one which stands just below and in front of the next going back, back, back.  The earth here will not perish, gaining strength and green each day as the sun bakes on, on, on.  Today the beautiful things of this land sought me, as I once sought them.