Un cavallo bianco ... via da qui ci porterà

White horse at Nadur Valley, Gozo

I came across this picture I took last November while on a 12-hour holiday in Gozo. I was fascinated by the beautiful landscape. Actually I could hardly believe my eyes since in my country it is quite rare to find a spot with no streets, without cars parked on both sides of the road, etc etc. It almost struck me as surreal; especially the white horse which immediately reminded me of that 1976 Matia Bazar tune Cavallo Bianco, particularly the lines: Un cavallo bianco, bianco come un velo, /via da qui ci porterà.

These past few days I met three Maltese emigrees who returned to the Rock for a short visit. I met Toni Sant first, who came home one Saturday evening and we watched the final night of Sanremo while eating cous-cous with red hot chilly peppers and sipping my mulled wine.

Then I met Sharon , with whom I talked of a project which I won't go into details about. (More of that later on).

This morning I found this voicemail message on my phone: Feltrinelli announcing his arrival in Malta. I immediately phoned him and he came over for lunch (overcooked veal, tomatoes, brown rice with broad beans, peas, basil, cheese and god knows what else. He also had 2 cans of Cisk and some 200g Edam cheese, plus smoked two Silk Cuts in the balcony as smoking indoors is from now on prohibited).

Great to meet friends you usually email or Skype. And it is also interesting to read the posts on their blogs reporting their Malta experience. And it is also interesting how they, maybe due to their turning past 30, speak so fondly of their Rock and its inhabitants (should I call these Rockers??). Take this tear jerking comment by Toni Sant for instance:

Instead of turning this blog into a moaning gripe (so no one can scream "sour grapes" at me!) I prefer to cherish the beautiful moments I experienced during the last couple of weeks. In essence, I am very pleased to have met a handful of people I treasure as the warmest and/or most interesting people in Malta I've had the opportunity of meeting during my lifetime.

Or Feltrinelli's:

Change hasn't taken place, so far, and so I enjoy the eternal beauty of this country which no motherfucking contractor or corrupt government can ever destroy: the sunshine, the sea, and the other romantic accessories which characterize our homeland.

Sharon's nostalgic muses take a culinary form:

Today I was invited to lunch with friends in Mqabba. Lunch was a barbecue and I chose to taste Maltese sausage for the first time! It wasn't strictly the first time, I had had it once or twice previously with pasta but this time I actually had the whole thing plonked on my plate with lots of tomatoes in olive oil and a large baked potato. There were also chicken legs basted in some secret recipe (because I never found out what the dripping actually was) but I was too full to attempt any. Lunch being a thoroughly friendly affair, we planned to meet at 12.30, I turned up at 2 and we were at table till 7. For tea we had kannoli tal-irkotta and sfinec (zeppoli). I refused the wine because I needed a break after two days running of the free-flowing stuff. I'm out of practice!

Jacques Rene Zammit, born in the year of the Rabbit, opens his most recent post thus:

Tomorrow I will reluctantly leave the Maltese Islands. Much more reluctantly than usual. I had a distant forebodeing that this would happen as I stepped off the plane almost seven days ago. The first sniff of Mediterrenean air was of the kind that makes you fall in love with the place all over again. The smell stayed throughout and its pulling factor was immensely improved by the good company, good wine and good fun to be had on the rock.

I find these posts cute. For some reason I find it hard to share their romanticism. Most probably because unlike these fellow Maltese I haven't met the white horse waiting to take me away. But yesterday, at the reading session of the EACLALS triennial conference, before reading some poems I had written during my trips to Poland and to Slovakia, I surprised myself when I improvised an introduction, saying: as a poet-traveller I search for self in the other.