Lamentations on Real Things

 Suddenly taking on melancholia as the summer is gone...

This is a far cry from Mississippi in both place and time, because I'm reading a novel from a writer in New York City, published in three volumes and, alas, I'm on the last of the three books and I have less than a hundred pages to read. The single-concept of the entire novel is the 19th century lives of two men Carlos and Miguel in a life long relationship in Huelva Spain, and the last volume in this novel is approaching a fever pitch of how badly the Spanish were treated by the British, when the British opened up and operated a copper mine near Huelva, Spain, in the southern part of the country. This is by no means the gist of the novel, which is really about life and those who lived it within the satellite orbit of Miguel Rios, the narrator, and Carlos his partner. It's a marvelous novel with all the authenticity one can get through the truth only fiction can relate, solidly grounded in historic Spain of the late 19th century, and in this case the Riotinto mine massacre; this is but a part of this story. Still, in the final pages of this novel, I am in a state of melancholia, not only for the characters in the book but perhaps for the nature of humankind, the nature of living on a planet and the physical plane of existence.

The novel Carlos y Miguel is in three parts: Book I Among Holm Oaks and Rock Roses; Book II Light on the Water; and Book III Going Home. The author is currently working on a revision that will soon be appearing on Amazon, but in the meantime, here is a link to all three books. Here

But for today, for this postcard from Mississippi, I'm distraught about the actual process of open pit copper mining and the deep, deep scars on the earth it has wrought all over the world.  The pictures here show the Riotinto mine and the Riotinto river, which gets its blood-red color from the iron in the water, along with other minerals. The book I'm reading has brought me to thinking longer about such mining operations. In the story we are shown how the characters' lives were utterly destroyed by the large companies that could render such wounds to the earth and poison the people of Huelva and the surrounding pueblos. L.A. Charles's novel is about so much more but is also historically correct.

So, it's fall, and while the weather is still warm enough to run around in shirt sleeves (here in the south), fall is a time of massive transition, between the lush greenery of the summer and the fallow landscape of winter. It is one of my favorite times of year, but also one of the most internally lamentable as things die. It is not that L.A. Charles's novel of Carlos and Miguel is melancholy, nor lamentable, but it is a depiction of real life through the marvelous lens of a novel.