Setting fence posts in concrete is a bit like the process of dying. I’m not speaking to the fully awful physicality of punching holes into the earth, but more to the fact that as the concrete fills the hole, mixes with water, and the post becomes more and more rigid, attention has to be paid more and more closely in order to make sure that as rigidity fully takes on, the post is where you meant it to be. There’s no fussing with the position once the hole is topped off, and what is left is a monument to a moment’s time of work; a reflection on a life. The metaphor can run on with the hanging of boards and whatnot, but I think I’ll leave it right there. The fact is that everything is in everything else. There is no boredom, only a failure to see a new relationship or shell that an action or moment is wrapped in.
I have recently been thinking of standing on a shore and watching something in the ocean with another person and wondering about the shared experience. How do you create depth when there is no eye contact? Or is there depth in the same way? Maybe staring into an ocean can make one blurry eyed, and see mountains in their filmy eyes; thick with something like spit or contacts left in overnight.
Or maybe oceans are just as good as mountains, because what are waves if not geologically sped up mountains; forming and dissolving in seconds, showcasing a theatre piece titled “50 million years”.
I was in the grocery store a couple days ago, buying yogurt, and Katy Perry was on. For some reason it transported me to driving down the California cost, listening to Firework with a friend of mine, windows down, both of us looking out at the ocean and I think, *I think*, we were thinking the same thing:
You just gotta ignite the light