dictation's Diaryland Diary
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Words from Ground Zero (2)
"As I pass through the check point, I feel that I have entered an unreal world. In the dead zone, the silence of the villages, roads, and woods seem to tell something at me....something that I strain to hear....something that attracts and repels me both at the same time. It is divinely eerie - like stepping into that Salvador Dali painting with the dripping clocks. "Elena's account of her motorcycle journey through lands reformed by Chernobyl is far more compelling and heartbreaking than anything Hollywood has concocted to terrify us on celluloid.
She is the daughter of a Russian nuclear physicist who has worked for the past 18 years in Chernobyl doing research. He got her a permit to make the unusual journey.
Her English, though fractured in places, is descriptive, thoughtful and elegant. I think I almost prefer the foreign expression of English. I'm certainly grateful that non-English people express themselves so fluently in English. What a bonus for me, your average unilingual English Jane who skipped mandatory French class every chance she got.
(My reads, in this case, Melissa, always lead me to wonderous discoveries like this.)
"Time to go for a ride. This is our road. There won't be many cars on those roads. This place has ill fame and people try not to settle here. The farther we go, the cheaper the land, the less the people and the better the roads.. quite the reverse of everywhere else in the world - and a forecast of things to come."As we pass the 86th kilometer, we encounter a giant egg - which marks the point where civilization as we know it ends - and the Chernobyl ride begins.
"Someone brought the egg from Germany. It represents LIFE breaking through the hard shell of the unknown. I am not sure if this symbolism is encouraging or not. Either way, it makes people think, and for us this is our last chance to stock up on edible food, drinkable water and uncontaminated fuel. Our journey from here is a gradually darkening picture of deserted towns, empty villages and dead farms."
She writes beautifully, there's no doubt at all about that.
10:46 p.m. - 19 April 2004
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