Last Sunday I tried to take you back to the end of the world. I’d been there before, just once, at some point in the previous year on an evening when everything seemed very close to falling apart—now I struggled to find the end of the world on a map. Was it on the northern side of the peninsula, or the very western edge? I could recall with ease the slope of shell, the shallow river like a miniature delta that needed to be waded through to properly reach the end of the world. (On that Sunday I also had to try and convince contact lenses into my eyes, so that I could see the end of the world in all of its I-remember-it-being-beautiful glory.)
Eventually—during breakfast—I located the correct map square and we arrived there at about 10:30am, just as the sun persuaded the clouds away for a while, just as some residents were pouring concrete into a small trench. The end of the world had a few more people than before, and the countless billions of sharp, miniscule shell pieces turned our barefoot walking into something quite raw and invigorating. For a good while we just watched how the river flowing down met with the ocean tide coming in, because together they created huge orderly gulps of water that seemed to defy gravity and carry a large number of promises.
At the end of the world we consumed small oranges, and pocketed small pieces of plastic that would otherwise remain there, or end up somewhere hurtful. There is a surprising quantity of plastic at the end of the world, much more than you might have expected and definitely more than you can fit into the finite coat pockets of two people.
While we stood holding our empty orange peels a man managed to triumph over the waves and swim out a way, but thinking about it now I’m not sure where he would be headed, not sure what comes after the end. He seemed pleased enough though, and maybe when he returned back to the shore he knew something I do not know—something about how the end of the world perhaps isn’t really the end, or at the very least something insightful about swimming.
We didn’t stay more than an hour or two, because the end of the world is a powerful and unusual place to stand—if you were not careful, I think it would be possible to stay there for too long, or for always, which is why it’s important not to go alone. It isn’t that things look different when you return from the end, not that everything has changed; on the contrary it appears that nothing has taken another breath while you were gone. No, the feeling provided by the end of the world is one of eternity, a feeling of everything mattering forever but also only mattering for a few moments, a feeling of a river meeting the sea and not necessarily much more.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:
Various work by London-born (and based) photographer Tami Aftab. There is a short interview here about her series The Dog’s In The Car, which explores her father’s way of living with short term memory loss—“navigating where comic relief fits in to the topic of illness and evidencing a relationship between father and daughter.”
QUOTES OF SOME RELEVANCE:
“He gave me the look we give each other when one of us forgets who we are.”
“There was almost nothing to say that the universe had not said already.” — Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You
“Perhaps you are aware that when we read under our breath, we produce the sound of the letters at an inaudible frequency.” — Carlos María Domínguez, The Paper House
This is beautiful and full of breathing. Thank you.