Dear friend,
There’s a guy working as a builder on a scaffolding tower about seventy metres from where I sit. I’m sat at Chiara’s desk looking out of a first floor window. It’s properly autumnal now. The summer has definitely finished and the super markets have started to stock Christmas goods. The builder’s using a power tool to remove a decorative cornice from the outside of a neighbour’s house. They’re having cladding fitted.
One hundred and nineteen years ago, another builder on another scaffolding put that cornice up there. Before any mechanised global warfare. When the world was both very different and exactly the same.
Grey clouds against blue skies.
The grassy banks of the river, the same trees I visit now. Growing.
These homes were brand new. The trees younger.
Above the trees. Stars. Moon. Planet. Infinite space.
The cornice is now a line of rubble and dust on the pavement. Its dusty remains are being swept into a pile.
Mixing with the rainwater.
Turning grey.
It’s a sobering thought.
The lifespan of a decorative cornice.
How much conflict has manifested on earth over the last hundred and twenty years.
You can’t take it in.
What we most need
is what will bring us peace.
That won’t be material things.
Have they ever brought you lasting peace?
It’s something else then.
This something we most need.
That we run from.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey