Salt city

Im going to start posting here whatever I write for my creative writing class... I should see how much I improve.

Andrea Alarcon

Writing exercise #1

09/11/2006

Inspiration: picture #4

The Salt City

The legendary Salt city; I had finally reached it after long days of exhausting trailing through the Greek-Mediterranean coast. The architectural wonder radiated in front of my eyes partly because of the halo surrounding it, partly because of the glistening of the mineral under the burning sun. In midst of my haze and I found a little soda shop where I planned on easing the intense thirst that had invaded my throat. As I waited for my drink, I curiously grazed the wall with the tip of my finger and brought it to my tongue. “The structure is old. The saline taste is barely there anymore” said a very old man who was crouched in the dusty corner. His wrinkles were accentuated by white powder, and his gaze was full of blindness. “Where are you from?” He continued to ask. The fact that I was so obviously foreign, even to a blind man, added my flustering to an already unbearable heat. “I know you are a stranger because of the acidity of your heart, and the need to alkalinize it. That’s why you are here.” I took my cola and quickly strolled out of the magazi. Tasting the walls…that was what had given me away. Not my acid heart, which I was sure not even him could see. “Lucky guess” I thought. “I am sure I am not the first to come here in search of equilibrium.”

Even if the saline taste had left the walls the smell certainly impregnated the atmosphere. I felt like I was swimming in the open sea and with a clumsy movement I had snorted a string of salt water into my nose. It was desert dry in spite of its closeness to the ocean, and the thirst would not leave me no matter how many times I gorged something along the way. The salt was everywhere: the wrinkles of old men, the sugar coating of the pastries, the spaces between my toes, the mustaches of the merchants, the outlines of footprints, the rough barks of dying dogs. I could even devise it in the atmosphere if I stared really hard into emptiness. As I walked I continued to pass my hand over walls in a very subtle manner, and bringing it to my mouth in an attempt of tasting this wonder and proving its physicality. After a while my mouth tasted so salty I stopped and realized that the lack of immediate recognition was because my other senses had leveled the saltiness to the taste one; it smelled and looked so salty that my mouth had to make an extraordinary effort to distinguish the taste.

It was only when the sun began to set that I remembered the purpose of my being there in the first place. It held true what they said, that the thirst and the sun could bury you into the walls of the city, and like many, you would never leave. Many succumbed to the stupor and caught the sickness of amnesia; forgot where they came from and where they were going. I looked at my wrist, where I had the bracelet I had braided out of bright colored threads, it read “purpose: equilibrium, and return home, Cuba” that way I was sure I would never forget.