We’re always glad when they come. But also to see them go. The things that remain, the arches and ornaments, tell us of a life that has been lived. Single shards spell out eternity. Jars and vessels are libraries and witnesses all at once: the outlines of eternal travellers who never arrive, but shouldn’t be impeded. Decisions should only be made when one is aware of various possibilities. Retreat into one’s own existence. Dilute one’s identity. ‘I’ is only a construction, too. Swim. Be water my friend. So limpid as to provide a large area for the phantoms and projections of others. Transparent bodies. A heart of glass. Before people never got old enough to get cancer. Procedures. The representation of death as sickness. The metaphysical order of things. An understanding that living beings in the world are compositions standing side by side, tightly bound enough to make it through the day, and that in spite of everything they are of this earth, in life and death. And this way of being an ‘earthling’ is a kind of counterpoint to the transcendentalism of philosophy, science and politics, as well as all the other, different regimes that involve a commitment to immortality. The spider weaves the world.

By Paul Wiersbinski