I found her
walking up a flight of stairs
that seemed to lead
straight up to heaven
yet I only saw
in front of me
a valley of desolation
She was walking up a flight of stairs. I thought she might ascend to heaven right there and then. But for some reason she turned around and stuck her hand out, knowing in some sense that I was there already. She took my hand and we walked up the hill. But we did not end up in heaven, we moved horizontally across the valley of desolation.
Cracks filled the earth and we looked at the world from above. The world seemed old, older than we thought. Skin wrinkles, deep pores, filled with years and years of dirt and decay. We stood above the ground, not yet in heaven, but no longer rooted in the world were we used to walk in. For the time being, we thought about it, what the world would look like if we just left it, only to return as unbounded beings. But we could not leave the senses behind, we found ourselves locked in this place.
Alas, we could not remain these half-heavenly beings floating around. We needed to ground ourselves in the world, in our hands, in the making of a life that was grounded and rooted yet light enough to horizontally move across the world. For the view from here was good, but living in the dirt and decay of life was more precious.
All of the musings and writings are my own, albeit inspired by this girl. The photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Nikkor 50mm lens.