Dream about Motherland - Tamás Páczai



Dream about Motherland
As a young boy of six you go hiking with your parents, you marvel at the world among beech trees, pick the flowers by the horses and go in your tiny boots giggling from village to village. You chat with wee old ladies and men with the seriousness of a six year old, they listen and laugh. If you are not teasing the cat, you are stumbling with the scythe under the watchful eyes of your father or you are standing in the snow up to your waist and you want to cry not yet knowing you have no reason to.



In twenty years you walk alone under the beech trees, but you don’t marvel any more. You would pick the flowers but don’t dare. You run up the steep mountain looking for signal. You listen to the old ladies and men, now it is them who tell the stories. They smile, but they don’t laugh. Their stories are stories from your childhood, memories of their times. You see the man with the scythe, but you only take his picture. In the evening you are in the pub, drowned in beer and dreaming in bitterness. Wake up, tomorrow you need to continue the last twenty years.


It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand how the countryside that was flourishing for centuries  can disappear in a couple of decades. Girls do not return to be the old ladies, lads are busy with the lawn mower in the suburbs. They have good signal there, no need to climb mountains for it.
 
“A tiny bit. Just a little bit. All it takes. It helps to forget. The sorrow and the bitterness. A shot everyday is relaxing.” Told me a wee old man with watery eyes.  “And then another one” smiled wryly.

- text and photos © Tamás Páczai
 Website www.paczai.com

Tamás Páczai won the opportunity to exhibit in the Mai Manó Gallery, Budapest in 2011 as a result of a portfolio consultation, organized jointly by the Studio of Young Photographers and the Hungarian House of Photography - Mai Manó House. See previous blogpost on 591.
It is a pleasure to share with you this fine series called "Dream about Motherland" and the text that goes along with it. - Mr Urbano

Comments

br said…
beautiful photos and presentation. It's nice to have some words with it!
Michael W said…
Vey beautiful!
Michael W said…
Very! ... =))