A mass of yellow stone floating in the blue of the clear, brilliant sky above and the turbulent Guadalquivir below – its enormous bulk made weightless by the context. Ottoman Cordoba was a univer-city, a unverse with a small “u”. A mess of cultures, sweaty cross-fertilization – exciting, faintly indecent, infinitly productive. Not the golden mean of Aristotle, not the measured path of restraint – contorted co-mingling, intertwined but not melded. The way of Socrates – clear contradiction that is growth made stone.
The beach is a special place, a narrow path between heights and depths, created by water.
Precipitous cliffs on the right – concrete, huge, looming their weight makes them feel acute and real, like pain. It’s often said that life is pain – it is, but lasting pain is only an illusion created by the myth of lasting self. But so too is happiness – same logic applies. Avoiding one and chasing after other – a looser’s game. You stop the chase and acquiesce to pain. It lays quiescent and underpins your joy.
Enormous sea on the left – deep, silent, inchoate, seamlessly transforming into sky. Three container ships in undifferentiated sea-sky, like ducks over the fireplace. Familiar, ridiculous and safe, creating anchor point for frightened gaze that’s lost in space and finding you in time – the time of progress.
So you progress – you walk along the beach, twixt depths and heights, abandon and despair, between deficiency and excess, the middle way, the golden mean of Greeks. Temerity-timidity not much to choose between – one consonant, two vowels. The trick is not to chose or compromise but merely to tread between the two, not enter the extremes, keep in the middle, create the path anew with every move.
What you really need is a thin line of firm sand, between loose dry and slippery wet, easier to walk on. Someone to hold by the hand, to not have to look down for solid footing, to see all that beauty.
Extremes are always ugly, beauty is in golden mean, in-sink and in-between, a pattern in complexity, a path that unifies variety and us.
The space partitioned by electric wires And anchored to the ground by the poles Is well and truly caught. They cut my vision – Straight lines across unending undulation Of hills and clouds. Ugly not because Of shape, but due to insular connections – They only touch each other, not the space They fracture with the guiltless disregard Of those unaware. Rest in peace My endless space Available in pieces.
Today the sky is low overhead. It’s paved with clouds – small and hard; It presses down, hue and weight of lead. You feel hemmed in an empty prison yard.
Today the sea is cold and oily-still, reflecting cobbled sky – grey shades on grey. Today the pain is harder to conceal, as heavy blankness saps your strength away.
Today it’s hard to leave the past behind you try ignoring sky and sea in vain. They press too tight, you panic, deaf and blind. It’s hard to move, but harder – to remain.
You trudge through empty, foggy, silent streets the road is uphill. The hill is high. One foot in front of other, body leads. Insensibly, you walk into the sky
And on you walk, along the cobbled sky, the sea above reflecting endless plain. To see the world anew. To say good-bye. To greet the sun that burns support away.
