Perhaps instances of primitive man are more common than I thought. Darla Bruno’s Vita da Sogno blog post reminded me of the Italian “primitives” I’ve come across:
“Who?” I ask, realizing it did seem a bit odd, a busy road, a man pushing a wheelbarrow, but perhaps just leaving the city limits of Carunchio, the site wasn’t so unusual.
“Primitive man.”
Gerardo tells me he “refuses everything.” That primitive man needs to do everything “all his own way.” He lives without electricity, without bread even; he hasn’t let a single euro (or lire) pass through his fingers in countless years. ~ Carunchio Part 4: Forgotten Tastes
In Sardinia, the primitive man built match-stick memorials to the Virgin. They flowed from niches in the fire blackened walls of his little house, spilled across the tops of dark-wood cabinets illuminated by lantern. He herded sheep, he drank, he made match-stick art.
In Puglia, primitive man had never (he swore) let a drop of water touch his lips. Even his 70s he could build an entire paiara out of fieldstones in a week or ten days, a paiara being a stone tower-like dwelling—a few used as houses, most as places the shepherds went to be alone with their comic-book porn while the sheep huddled under trees in the heat of the day.
Wine was all anyone had ever seen him drink. And his paiara was finished in a week.
These characters will last in memory forever. There is a certain allure to folks who have shunned the outside world and the accumulation of wealth that is supposed to dovetail nicely with the hard-working mentality they’ve nurtured. Not that any of us would actually like the life the primitive man has chosen.
Not by a long shot.