Image by Christine Renney
They say that familiarity breeds contempt. I’m not quite there yet but this place has begun to grate a little, to nag and gnaw at me. Feels as if I have conjured it up from out of nowhere and I’m not sure why or how.
A tiny square in a sprawling city, a city that can’t be contained. It is spreading and thriving despite the degradation, all the empty and dilapidated buildings.
I have settled here and I stay until I have the cash, enough for what I need. And in order to get it, I walk elsewhere, a little farther each time. And yet still I keep making my way back.
I awake in the grounds of the Cathedral. Hands in the short and wiry grass, I push myself up and gaze down at the City. I try to pick out the place from which I set out, the one to which I keep on making my way back. But it is so vast, a dense and cubist scrawl. For months now I have been walking further and further from this particular part of the City in order to find an off-licence with an unfamiliar face across the counter. Someone who won’t recognise me as I purchase the bottles and the cans I need. And this time I didn’t turn myself around. I kept on walking for longer than was necessary and eventually I settled down.
Glancing up at the Cathedral I shudder to think that I have slept here in the grass; in this carefully tended, this perfectly and painstakingly manicured graveyard and, that as I did, someone tidied around me, removing the strewn cans, even prizing the almost empty bottle from my hand. Taking it and the last few drops I hadn’t quite managed to drain.
I love the imagery contained in this piece, Mark: the idea of the city spreading and re-inventing itself, leaving parts of itself to decompose; the cathedral, seemingly having no hope to offer the lost, and life continuing as if on auto-pilot.
Great photograph too, which fits perfectly as if the spire were reaching up and finding nothing.
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That’s a great comment Chris. Thank you from both of.
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Reblogged this on The Brokedown Pamphlet.
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Profound, Mark. It is so layered in nuance…In pathos. How close is dedication to padantism? How far is humility to degradation? How near is perception to truth? Big stuff.
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Thank you so much Pam. I do so value your comments.
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