Laurebina.
I take possession of the room. The other day the carpet of clouds was at a lower altitude, this time it covers the sky above us. On the horizon, the peaks of Ganesh Himal and Manaslu fade into gray blankets. After an hour, the village is wrapped in a thick fog. I have dinner. I go up to the room. The structure - the stairs, the corridor, the terraced balcony, except for the bathrooms - is entirely made of wood, almost dated wood. My footsteps echo like those in Vincent Price's films. I try to make the comparison plausible: I become the silhouette at the end of the corridor, a long corridor, with the perspective lines accentuated in a wide-angle distortion, like in the corridor of Jennifer Connely - oh, Jennifer! - sleepwalking in Dario Argento's PHENOMENA, with that wonderful track by Claudio Simonetti in the background, I become the dark presence of this desolate and deserted place. But not for long. In five minutes that structure will be populated by noisy killer cockroaches and unfortunately it is not a Kafka delirium: they will come up in droves from the hall/dining room, they will be drunken Sherpas and local tourists, they will fiddle with the bolts on the doors, they will have difficulty finding the right key and will have difficulty inserting it into the lock, this will trigger jokes, gags, pats on the back, hysterical hilarity, and when they finally manage to possess the rooms they will joke, in a great saloon-like racket they will throw their backpacks on the fragile wooden floor that is almost dated, and the dark figure that is in me will reveal itself for what it is, a killer, the Jason from FRIDAY THE 13TH, but what for me is a horror movie set, for those little monsters is that of a western movie. I have already been to Monument Valley, there were the typical rocks, there was the dust raised by the wheels of the stagecoaches fleeing from the Paiute Indians, there was the point where John Ford stood and gave orders to the crew, there were coyote tracks, there was the sinuous trail of fleeing rattlesnakes, there were no rednecks of that kind.
Once the euphoria has worn off, the insects calm down, until they descend into the dining room like the delirium of schoolchildren at recess.
I sit on the bed and look out the window. I watch the coils of fog stretch out like dragon necks on the peaks, envelop the high-voltage poles in a sadomasochistic performance, slowly rise, slowly fall, chase each other, wrap themselves up, pile up in an orgy, mount what little sun remains at dusk, make it redder, no one knows whether from shame or lust, make it grayer, no one knows whether drained or summoned by a werewolf zombie, make it black, no one knows whether from a curse or in symbiosis with my murderous instinct, until authentic darkness prevails over everything.
I spend a quiet night. The exhibitionist is silent.