Motionless the Silhouettes
Motionless the Silhouettes
It is easy to forget, sometimes, that these are the cities of humans, that there is not one square inch of these vast areas untouched my human hands, or untrodden by human feet. There used to be grass here. Silence and desolation too. When sunlight strikes obliquely the uppermost walls of buildings, and we look up to see the golden rays cast over the rough surface, creating microshadows in the tiny divots and at an angle to the minuscule lichens, far above the tired hum of the city below, we are reminded of this time. So too are we reminded of this time in the transitory minutes between the light and the dark, the dark and the light: for when dawn blotches pink or dusk washes orange across our sky, and we see motionless the silhouettes of chimneyed buildings across the horizon, we forget the people contained within and think only of the unceasing passage of time. We know in those twilights that the world turned before we were legion, and will continue to do so long after we are gone. Perhaps for some, looking up at those sunlit buildings, a small uneasy fear is born and passes over them like a shadow across a field, to be carried away a moment later on the hot fumy air.
For myself, seeing the sun carve its path across greystone walls, I feel only a deep, sudden, stilling calm, hitting like a wave, pulling me down into deep-sea silence where I see the world without people and realise that it wouldn’t be so bad. It holds me before buoyancy returns me to the surface. And then I’m back, walking in between the parked cars and unlit windows, and for a few seconds it seems as if that vision has come to pass, until a man walks by with a dog on a lead. The twilight is over and the world, in its absolute day or absolute night, is again the human world, ours until the next rising or setting illoominates our human mortality.
Tags: desolation, homework exercise, James Joyce, made-up words, modern, Photos, shadows, silence, silhouettes
