There is, at times, a light in the evenings, that is wholly magical - as it enables me to see. To see that there is rubbish here, and beauty. And beauty and rubbish walk hand in hand with elegant pace.
The ivy climbs up the Robinia, the Ailanthus pokes through the rubble with its colourful fronds, wood ants pinch my skin while the mist envelops my thoughts. In the distance, the mechanical clanking and buzzing of the road. As I turn my eye, plastic memories of previous lives, the metal and the rubber, the bits and pieces of what some call junk. And the tools and the tricks: the electric fence, the shed, the footprints of this clumsy animal that we are.
There is rubbish, here - granted. And beauty, loads. And in the midst of it all, making the rubbish rubbish and the beauty beauty, there is this little animal we call human. With its industriousness and loudness. How hard it is to look at it with unceasing yet loving attention.
Inhaling and exhaling, contracting and expanding, building and destroying, competing and cooperating, regenerating and polluting. Disturbing its surroundings by virtue of atomic bombs and bulldozers, or just knives and broadforks.
Isn’t it just pioneering new ground and creating the premises for new life to make it obsolete?
If I manage to see past this rubbish, the beauty will reveal itself. If I drench myself in this beauty, I will rejoice in the rubbish.
In the evening light there is no dualism, and no such thing as ecological limits. There is no harmony to be found. There’s only harmony to be shaped in the fire of this elegant contrast.
A harmony that can be enjoyed, here and now. Taking in all this beautiful rubbish and this excruciating beauty.
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