Eternal City

Already the flowers are sagging in the warm air. The roads are deserted and the sky is cloudless, dreamless. It is only 9:15 but already one feels the day is done, the dull and flat afternoon is already grasped in these moments, the step becomes slack. Nothing happens in summer; everything is bleached, canceled out: sun-and-wheat consciousness. Time only passes in winter.

The northern soul sometimes seeks the order of the sun and its ability to unburden us, open us up. But mostly, it is absence and blue horizons that have a hold. The pulse amplifies into a terrible , overbearing presence. Is this what eventually drove Van Gogh mad?

Ubo, who doesn't have a pessimistic bone in his body, who would dismiss a dark thought as impractical, said to me: we are like strangers in this world, each of us as behind a glass case; we can see and feel for others, we can see their lives but not reach out to them. Nor can we comprehend their suffering, as they cannot ours.

I wondered: is this why the world sometimes seems a spectacle, somewhat unreal, a show of puppets-beautifully painted, no doubt, but puppets nevertheless? What would shatter that glass, and what would it be like to stride freely, aimlessly or with purpose, like a giant in that other space..to shake hands with an angel.

And then, returning to this theme, and without tilting his head (which would have indicated he had reflected on this matter) he said something like: but that is the tragedy and the beauty of life.

The Allama would say: the trouble with this life is that it has too many limitations. The trouble with the next: it has none. And there is no greater limitation than Time ("Do not vilify Time for Time is your Lord"). Seal sings: Time is the space between me and You.

The Eternal City beckons, but so does the one that is close at hand, that is destined to pass-perhaps even more so. The nihilists see themselves- if nothing else- correctly: they love life, we love death. It is said that those who are waiting to go to Heaven remark: 'we tasted fruit like that back on Earth'. One cannot help think that there is some longing expressed in those words. We fall in love with what is lost.

Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes.