Tine Is Tailed by a Teapot

Ever since Tine noticed several days ago an ad for England's Coast to Coast Walk on her blog, she's taken a keen interest in the ads on her site.

(The entry on the ad for the long-distance
walk, titled "A Nice Cup of Tea," is on this page:
http://villagewalks.blogspot.com/2006_01_02_villagewalks_archive.html)

After Tine nearly got bonked on the head by snow bombs, there was an advertisement for a sale on falling snow. When Tine unearthed an Egyptian mummy in her village, an ad for Egyptian singles appeared the next morning.

Tonight Tine pointed out to Rubob a new ad for tea on her blog. Rubob isn't particularly interested in ads, especially not right before bedtime, but he does like tea, so he took a look.



"I think they're tailing me, Rubob," Tine said. "How did they know we liked tea so much?"

"They're tailored ads, that's all," Rubob said.

"Even if they're nicely dressed, Rubob, I don't think I like the idea of them tailing me to the teashop in Millerton."

"They're tea ads, Tine, and you like tea. You've been hoping for a tea ad to replace all those Egyptian mummy ads."

"Perhaps you're right. I don't think I'd like to be followed by an Egyptian mummy, even if he were nicely dressed," Tine said, beginning to nod off. "I'd much prefer to be followed by that perambulating teapot we saw yesterday at the teashop."



"Perambulating teapot?" Rubob wondered. "You're a silly thing, little Tine," he said wearily (but with affection).

"Not for all the tea in China," Rubob thought, looking over at Tine in her woolen nightcap.

Tine's World Turned Upside Down

Tine and Rubob didn't take a walk in the village today. Instead, as part of their continuing effort to broaden their horizons, they went to Tine's favorite movie theater, Real Art Ways, and focused their attention on another village, called Siah Dareh.

Siah Dareh is carved out of a hillside in Kurdistan, Iran -- not unlike the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado in some respects -- and it's the subject of "The Wind Will Carry Us," a movie by the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.



The film turned Tine and Rubob's world upside down, as it happened, in part because the projectionist, up in his booth directly behind Tine and Rubob, ran into some technical problems with the second reel. Here's the fresh prospective on the world provided to Tine, Rubob and others at the cinema:



"It's hard to read the subtitles this way," Tine said to Rubob, turning things over in her mind, as it were.

"It's Reel Art Ways, Tine" Rubob said, looking back over his shoulder at the projector in the booth.

The situation was rectified after a dark interlude in the theater, and the audience cheered when the film continued right side up. But Tine, whose head was in a whirl at times, was still left with a much altered view of the world, as the camera followed the film's main character, known as the Engineer, through the village's maze of alleyways, up and down its many wooden ladders and stone steps, and over its rooftops.

Rubob, on the other hand, left the theater feeling much refreshed, after a pleasant nap. Rubob was considerate enough not to snore, as the man who sat directly in front of him did throughout the film.

"What was the film about?" Rubob asked later.

In many ways, Tine said to Rubob, the theme was the one she and Rubob had explored the previous day in Millerton village: gaining a fresh perspective. The Engineer finds his own plans turned upside down as he pursues his mysterious task in the village. At one point, he takes out his frustration on a tortoise that crosses his path, flipping it over and leaving it to fend for itself in the sandy soil, under the hot sun. The audience cheered once again when the hapless tortoise succeeded in righting itself.

"Audiences like things right side up," Tine said.

"But what was the film about, Tine?" Rubob asked. "I don't even remember seeing a tortoise."

"It was a foreign film," Tine said, "and you were enjoying an afternoon kip."

The Engineer, Tine continued, may have been too focused on the dark side of life as he waited for an ailing old woman in the village to die. He spends a lot of time in the cemetery, looking down a hole being dug by a ditchdigger. One afternoon, the ditchdigger, making progress in his deepening hole, hands up a bone, and the Engineer keeps it.

"Alas, poor Yorick!" Tine said to Rubob, hoping to whet his interest with a smattering of Shakespeare.

The Engineer's perspective might have been set aright by the end of the story, Tine continued. He encounters a doctor who spends the larger part of his days traveling on a motorcycle from village to village, enjoying the beauty of the landscape. That's what it's all about, the doctor suggests, taking it all in while we're here in this world.

"That's how I feel on our walks in our village, Rubob," Tine said -- "that all's right with the world." She thought of the landscape of their village.



"I'm still not sure I know what it was about, Tine," Rubob said. "Why was the Engineer in the village? Did the old woman die? Why was he waiting for her to die? How does it end?"

"The Engineer tosses his bone in a stream, Rubob," Tine said. "But you'll have to see the movie. It was good."

On the way home, Tine took particular note of a story on "All Things Considered" about a book that stated that the 1930's Dust Bowl had been caused, as one Bam White put it, by farmers plowing up the soil so that the grass was -- curiously enough -- "wrong side up."

"Their world was turned upside down, too," Tine reflected.

"All in all, it was a very pleasant film," she thought as she arrived home.