At the End of the World (in other words: Woodford Library)

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.
for
On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet,
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world there will be,
No other end of the world there will be.

----C. Milosz

Woodford Library. 12:25.

C asks me to write from "wherever". This is as close as it gets. These are the type of places I always feel most at home; from searching for history books for my school projects, to the quiet, anonymous places like this one. They are like an oasis in a desert, a refuge from the "uniform of the times". And then there's the Punjab public library-a dusty, opaque place that, like the library in Eco's 'Name of the Rose' is full of mysterious unread books and ancient manuscripts. And 'Mecca', the British Library, whose exalted silence reverberates throughout the hallowed space. The great, monolithic bookcase at its centre, withstanding the dissolution of time. We are defined by what we escape from, but also by the place we call home, to where will always return, almost instinctively. Here, there is only the life of the mind, no religion, no ethnicity. Human, the way a cloud's a cloud.

From George Steiner:

The persistence, resilience of the idea of the timeless; the stability, the deep continuity in consciousness: our ability to express, communicate, gesture meaning-to see it in other cultures that stretch back in the mists of time: the language-animal. Are we entering a catastrophic break-not of a past but the past..the Trenches mark the end of communicable experience. The contract between word and world is coming to pass, expire. Technological changes are sweeping in a new metaphysics. An ontological nausea means that we are at the end of the world and we must bring an end to saying, meaning (Beckett). Only science counts..all else is 'non-sense'. The scepticism of Freud: do we say what we mean, do we mean what we say? What is left but the 'rag and bone shop of the heart'?

A young kid goes on a holiday with his friend, Paul, to the South of France. Only one returns, the other drowns.

'I don't believe Paul's death was the only thing that contributed to my breakdown but even now, thirty years later, images of that glorious summer day still come, clear and uninvited, into my mind, and I am standing on the beach-an 18 year-old with everything to live for-looking at death for the first time.'

A single moment can give shape to all others.

Jim Webber, 104, after working for 90 odd years has just stopped working as a gardener to spend more time on his own plot, so that he can grow red tomatoes.

'He has seen the ancient rhythm of farming life turn into a high-tech industry , and the village community disperse. And amidst all this dizzying change, one thing has been a constant: his garden. "Digging is good for the body and the soil". He plants trusty varieties such as 'Onward' for peas, 'Majestic' for potatoes, and 'Crimson Globe' for beetroot.'

When time is running out, stick with the familiar, with what you know.

But what do you know?

Meno:

'How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?'

Rebecca Solnit:

'The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This is the light that got lost..the blue of the land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not reach us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is the colour blue.'