Romesh Gunesekera
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Walberberg Seminar 2006: Home? |
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One evening, before dinner, I walked past the pretty line of lamps lighting the horseshoe drive in front of the house, towards the woods and the pedestrian bridge over the iced lake. The mud on the road had frozen into solid, hard, glazed ridges where cars and vans had passed earlier. The snow everywhere else was pristine.
I walked with the many conversations of the day about the old Walberberg, the new Walberberg, writers and writing, poems and stories swirling around in my head until I reached the woods. Then everything disappeared except a faint memory. I had never been to those woods before, but it seemed as though I had.
Long ago, as a boy, I had imagined a place just like it: dark, silent, cold, with tall snowy trees and frozen water. There was a story there, sparked off from some other story I had read, that took me on an extraordinary journey. Now another seemed around the corner waiting to be picked up and told again as stories always are, as they always have been and always will be. Waiting, in the dark, to be found and brought home into the magical world of words.
Romesh Gunesekera
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