Dienstag, 23. Februar 2010
You perhaps will not bask unthinking in the sun, privy to an idyllic landscape of gazelles and grass -- or seal yourself in the ice of the north; perhaps the earth is too old, too wearied. The overwrought early-twenty-first-century sentimentality (we'll say, for instance): maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's fantasy, maybe it's willful delusion like a breath of fresh air. A slow-motion YouTube video of an undefined African scene set to Yanni and a Sufi poem. Sincere thoughts, perhaps. It is curious, this shibbolethic birth.
Donnerstag, 18. Februar 2010
Dienstag, 2. Februar 2010
Lists of future activities were scattered around, along with the dust from the accumulation of days. The place had not been abandoned, by either time or inhabitants; the space had undergone a dramatic change. Plans still remained plans of things to come (always of things to come) and never saw realisation, were never reigned in and brought forth -- how often we get ahead of ourselves trying to collect our thoughts while we're walking through the dust collecting at our feet.
A tree bereft of perhaps three-quarters of its foliage swayed in the breeze; perhaps its waving was a sort of call of encouragement to the people standing around, or at least a visual distraction from the wandering, staring, and the half-hearted hoping. In this scene there is no crying, although in other places that is common. In this scene there is no speaking, though one would hope to hear a word -- again, as encouragement (always of things to come). The ground beneath had long ached under the strain of contradiction, until it snapped itself in-to joint; but this unexpected adjustment brought a sudden increase of dust.
She recalled the last time she had seen dust like this. There were once streets here: once -- it all seemed so indefinite by this time. There was a house and an old attic full of long-forgotten furniture, boxes, papers and ornaments, all coated in a thick layer of grey. She ran her finger across the top of a dresser as she had seen someone do once in a film, though she had worn no white glove. The trace of her finger, the impression on the dust, was, she thought now, a strange kind of trace --- one that takes away materially rather than leaving behind. But then she looked at her finger and found the reverse; the dust had left a trace on her.
She looked around and took a piece of paper from the rubble: a shopping list: candles, bread, bananas, film.
A tree bereft of perhaps three-quarters of its foliage swayed in the breeze; perhaps its waving was a sort of call of encouragement to the people standing around, or at least a visual distraction from the wandering, staring, and the half-hearted hoping. In this scene there is no crying, although in other places that is common. In this scene there is no speaking, though one would hope to hear a word -- again, as encouragement (always of things to come). The ground beneath had long ached under the strain of contradiction, until it snapped itself in-to joint; but this unexpected adjustment brought a sudden increase of dust.
She recalled the last time she had seen dust like this. There were once streets here: once -- it all seemed so indefinite by this time. There was a house and an old attic full of long-forgotten furniture, boxes, papers and ornaments, all coated in a thick layer of grey. She ran her finger across the top of a dresser as she had seen someone do once in a film, though she had worn no white glove. The trace of her finger, the impression on the dust, was, she thought now, a strange kind of trace --- one that takes away materially rather than leaving behind. But then she looked at her finger and found the reverse; the dust had left a trace on her.
She looked around and took a piece of paper from the rubble: a shopping list: candles, bread, bananas, film.
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