I'd arranged to meet F. at a specific place, and when I got to the village entrance, I saw her walking along the road in my direction. We had arranged to take part in this popular march together. There are hundreds of participants, cars parked everywhere, others maneuvering, as well as bikers, press crews, organizers' stands everywhere, etc. This crowd and this activity quite surprise me and make me see in a different light this flat, ghostly, usually deserted countryside, which I only travel by car when I go home to my parents for the vacations.
We insert ourselves among the walkers and cover several kilometers, almost in silence, she and I, in the village itself and then on dirt roads in the middle of no-man's-land.
There's something archaic about it. The genetic memory of a lively, crowded, even teeming countryside; fantasies of a people on the march, as in scenes from the Bible or perhaps certain fairy tales. Something that can resemble a fascist rally as much as scenes from the Liberation. Something Dionysian, shattering the dreary everyday order where everyone is holed up at home, where everything is static and silent.
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