A small circle, a nucleus. There it is. A moment in time. Waiting to be pushed or opened or crushed. To evolve into an entire body of work, a species, a world.
There is a before, there is now and there is after. And at the same time they aren’t. Is this the beginning of an end? the end of a beginning?
I tend to light three candles in churches and where i can. One is for the now, those present around me who are somehow connected to me in love. They can be anyone and all, as I am very aware of being just a particle in the giant living thing that is all of us. Then a candle for those who were before us. Their spirit lives on in that very moment and more. I think of the teacher who taught me how to speak German and English and who had the kindness to just give me time. I think of my grandparents, the grandfathers who were crushed by their lives like I never want to be crushed or do not wish this level of destruction upon anyone. The grandfather I had the privilege to meet in person and love, was the one who had lost his legs and his voice and so much of himself. But he kept pushing on, he was a strong, kind man. The other grandfather exists as a legend, a brassed cigarette box and two photographs. One is of him on a horse in the home village of Langenbielau, now Bielawa. The second image is of a man who had returned from a labor camp in Siberia. It is a ghost of a person really. Not much left of him, his eyes dull, his skin tightly hugging his skull. He died in Karl-Marx-Stadt. I am not sure he knew that his mother had escaped to that same city. I am not sure he knew that his youngest brother had survived the horrors of the war and that he had managed to escape to Straubing in Bavaria. They all knew that another brother had been killed in Russia. But they didn’t know more.
When the pain of knowing dances with the pain of not knowing. Who leads?
The third candle is for all those who are either marching into the future or not even yet born. Like my sons. Each one of them a different point of view onto humanity and the world. To their children, if they were to have any ever, I would be one of the grandfathers, possibly one whose story is worth remembering. A man who had written down some circular thoughts, drawn some circles and lit some candles in churches and temples and at home.
The circles of the past, the now and the future are just here so it is easier to grasp an ungraspable idea.
I am here for a brief moment, so i can organize some particles of dust and maybe put some water and oil onto surfaces. Then turn into those myself.
A small circle, a nucleus. Here again
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