The manual…
Life is like a manual that you leaf through at pace, as you look only for the immediate answers to satisfy the immediate concerns. You tell yourself, well, that you’ll return and inspect those passing pages in much closer detail at a later date, and learn from them, but of course once the pages are turned there is no going back to live that time again.
Those fleeting moments, that flicked by whilst in search of something else, are only made real – after the fact - by what we thought we saw or what we thought we knew from that time. As such, they are facts that are not to be trusted and yet as they are all that we have, from that past, they in turn become archived in a box called history; and they become all that we know of whom we were and who we are.
This morning I sat in the reception of an ‘old people’s home’ – where I’m currently working on a project. Looking at the fractal-like pattern of the carpet, the halo like rings of light in the ceiling and the crimson painted steps, with their yellow lining, that rose upwards with each step to disappear around a pink painted corner. You see symbolism everywhere here, in an empty seat, a discarded coffee cup and an open doorway.
Maybe it was just the opportunity to sit down in a quiet space, or perhaps it was the sight of the slow tentative footsteps of an old woman as she walked through reception, that brought one’s mind to how brief time is, as once, I thought, those feet were sure of step.
I’m not sure.
The day before I had given a lecture about how changing geographical space affects our psychological spaces and the next day here I am feeling blue in space where essentially people have come to die. Of course, the elderly people here don’t think that - only the melancholy figure sat in the chair in reception does. Everyone else just gets on with life here - as we all do.
Making do and putting off what they should be doing today, until tomorrow, in the hope that tomorrow will still be there.
