We have all come to this place abandoning apartment, girlfriends, cats, flagging families, belongings. At the end of the world, idiots with great vast gaps in our knowledge of how we may continue on earth, for the indefinite future. Come to 'open doors and windows in the blind walls of reality'* and play in worlds that, in all that is left of this biosphere, we don't have time to bring to full realisation. We have come cold, overburdened, with our lives on the back seat, in jumpers with sleeves that are too short. We have come to visit the faeries, castles, towers, parks and pools.
This morning, I lay on my stomach on the carpet. Behind and just below the green radiator I saw a piece of paper, a notepad with every page but one used. On it, all that was written was the word
KINDNESS.
In the afternoon I went outside to find a young morning Dove, the same morning Dove which pattered about at the bottom of the garden steps for crumbs. The little not-quite-grey, not-quite brown pale thing, born in the tree above the garden, still warm and soft, headless, lying on its back on the brick path.
To this place we have come, away from all that has come before. Come like budgies fleeing cats, come like morning Doves to the back door. Here, the mosquitoes live long. Here the river is full of forks. We cry 'a glass, a glass of water!' in unison. We smile and smile and smile.
*Slava Polunin, The Alchemy of Snowness.