Under the shield of ashes –
forgotten passions.
Ashes add to the peat,
feeding the wheat.
Wheat multiplies and thus
it’s feeding us.
People with decent rations
have time for passions.
Passions that burn in flashes
leave only ashes.
Under the shield of ashes –
forgotten passions…
Underground is deep in places.
Deep under.
Buried in space and time.
Connecting the romantic awe of the past,
when the technology was new
and the belief in its potential – unrestrained,
with the pragmatic helplessness of the present,
when we take a deep breath
before plunging into the unknown.
No longer an exciting miracle,
mysterious yet knowable,
but a complex system,
poorly understood and therefore dangerous.
You have to enter,
to give yourself up to the incomprehensible,
to the frightening and uncontrollable,
on a daily basis.
Just to get from A to B.
That’s how we travel in the close,
crowded space of the city.
That’s how we travel in time,
progressively more complicated.
Taking a deep breath
before plunging into a crowd
like water.
As you go under,
you can no longer hear the rain.
The water does not transmit sound,
it exerts pressure.
Comforting and stifling, it holds you tight.
Deep under.
Urban spaces –
they do their best to define us
as we do our best to push through the visual noise,
through the cultural pollution of busy streets,
through life thrust at us easily and cheaply –
consumed, discarded, unlived…
As you walk without a shadow of doubt, you enter the valley of the shadow of death. You will fear no evil, for you will be that evil, never seeing itself or the world, but seeing your reflection upon the face of the world.
I think it is vitally important to learn from history.
George Santayana once said that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
I can add that one of the first things we learn from the past is that those who repeat it are doomed.
As the tide goes out
and the interface between the land and the sea is laid bare,
the soggy mud reflects the majestic sky
so clearly,
so deeply,
so poignantly…
Tears well up in my eyes.
I feel at one with the mud,
but not with the sky.
