"as though it were forbidden"

"The rice fields here stretch almost to the edge of the jungle.  A couple of water buffalo are wallowing in a pond, submerged up to their backs in the muddy water.  Every so often one waggles its ears.  On a field track is another, solitary, buffalo harnessed to a two-wheeled cart, his head so low he looks to be asleep on his feet.  A small group of rice farmers, dressed in wide-brimmed straw hats, shirts, and loincloths, is bending over and toiling away, calf deep in water.  Each time one moves his feet there's a smacking sound, otherwise complete silence; they do their work in silence, planting the new rice shoots in the mud under the water.  Other than a sense of the day coming to an end, there is no indication of the time. It's as though it were forbidden -- there's not even a real sense of present because each performed action is already in the past, and each ensuing one is future.  All here are outside history, which in its taciturnity will not allow present.  The rice is planted, harvested, planted again.  Kingdoms fall into decay.  Stillness.  In the silence of eternities, shots ring out.  The peasants flee."

-- Werner Herzog, The Twilight World