After the Event...
A week spent under the Rhodian Sun,
Time with the Mothers and Fathers of Democracy. They've not been visited for a long while and we forgot how they can be. The concept of a single currency quite frankly, is something I don't want to debate. The concept of a single mentality, good luck with that one too. Perhaps someone should have looked at the different philosophies before deciding on a continents future. Ubermensch might want to sit at the table for his tea but what if the waiter isn't sure it's the same table from this morning. You get the picture.
The entire week was a splendid journey through the mindset of Homer's children. For those who like the straightforward excess of the "all inclusive" this journey is not for you. Those who are willing to look beyond shabby, outdated and "not as advertised in the criteria" the world of friendly, welcoming, easygoing and not easily forgettable awaits you. The warmth of a nation whose basic attitude is this is our home , you are welcome, oh, don't mind that our home happens to be a slightly motheaten and possibly, at one time, quite modern hotel put you off, it's still really our house. Our food is fresh and our smiles are real and you are our guests. This is how it worked and it worked very well. Anywhere you can lie on a settee with bare feet and play dominoes is more than my kind of place. We asked the question about austerity, debt and struggle.
Are things getting better, the answer, yes. Things are getting better but somethings run deep.
Are things getting better, the answer, yes. Things are getting better but somethings run deep.
I wonder how we would have dealt with their problem? I hoped, in a similar way.
(cold war telly)
Anyway, the beach...
Beaches can be many things. Beginnings and endings, strips of land that slowly become waves or magnets for those who delight in absorbing the radiation from the slowly dying star we circle. The best ones are those that could be somewhere else, somewhen else. My delight then in the one we found at the end of the road..
Imagine, if you will, you are one of the last people on Earth...
All around you is the debris of those who decided to bug out when they saw the warning sign of some unknown disaster. Plastic bottles, old fishing net, abandoned shoes the marks of their panicked fleeing.
A deserted beach with only us on it, shingle, pebbles, Planet of The Apes waves,all this connecting with random thoughts becoming possible future and past in what could have been.. at some point what could be.
All around you is the debris of those who decided to bug out when they saw the warning sign of some unknown disaster. Plastic bottles, old fishing net, abandoned shoes the marks of their panicked fleeing.
A deserted beach with only us on it, shingle, pebbles, Planet of The Apes waves,all this connecting with random thoughts becoming possible future and past in what could have been.. at some point what could be.
Amongst all this, signs of how people may have spent their last moments before they took the last coach out of Dodge. Makeshift table and chairs, ad hoc celebrations with friends and loved ones as they waited to pass into the unknown. The feelings and imaginings brought on by this kind of place are some of my favourite, the most intense. That fascination with how things could look when it's all come to some end , how our left behinds would tell our story. I have an obsession with the end of The World that strikes even in the middle of busy town centres. In the middle of everything.
The remains of someone's life. At some point busy, used and full of noise. The sense of an easy going community still there in the corners, rusting and cracked. Now, just fading colours and symbols on wood and concrete slowly giving in to entropy. I'm part of this world and I'm amazed by these things, things I know full well , things I recognise as once being something. What would a visitor from somewhere else imagine it to be, have been?
And Then....this. The remains of war. What would this conjure up. Although this is a part of very recent history, it already looks...alien. It is neither past nor present but something that could be from a time not as yet realised. As soon as I saw it, I knew it for what it was. Remains of past occupation. The left behinds of the aggressor. Redundant now. Filled with the sound of the sea and the debris of those who have occupied since the shooting stopped. This too though, for all its bulk and look of abandoned life pod, I really wouldn't have been surprised to see Taylor and Landon walking away from it, is slowly becoming sand.
And then , it sort of became apparent. We live with the abandoned all around us, all the time. We perhaps don't see it but it's just there. We live with history that we're part of but at the same time distanced from. The things I saw and delighted in are part of my own world, the happenings of this morning universally speaking but already, I view them as something that's almost ancient. The remains of a civilisation long gone, not really remembered,almost mythical. In reality the hallmarks of my grandfather's generation, not eighty years old.
We walked on, the purchasing of an ice cream from one of the shops in town our new encouragement. I turned to smile at Yvonne and just then, I was caught in a huge, fast moving shadow that glided silently over the shingles. I looked up to see the airplane that had caused it, its engines not heard over the boom of the waves. I watched as it grew smaller and then banked, heading towards somewhere else. Somewhere unknown.
A suddenly sharp feeling hit, a tingle,the inevitable connection and a slow smile...there , I thought, goes the last coach out of Dodge.
We walked on, the purchasing of an ice cream from one of the shops in town our new encouragement. I turned to smile at Yvonne and just then, I was caught in a huge, fast moving shadow that glided silently over the shingles. I looked up to see the airplane that had caused it, its engines not heard over the boom of the waves. I watched as it grew smaller and then banked, heading towards somewhere else. Somewhere unknown.
A suddenly sharp feeling hit, a tingle,the inevitable connection and a slow smile...there , I thought, goes the last coach out of Dodge.
