Sun
Both of us felt it: That day was an island,
strewn with rocks and lighthouses and lovers,
in the generous ocean. On the mainland,
people went about their business, eating
the Times, glancing through coffee and oatmeal,
as we walked the gangway into an original dream
of attentiveness, as if a day’s pleasure
could concentrate us as much as suffering,
as if the seawall were a banquet without
surfeit, as if we could walk hand in hand
with no one nearby, as if silence and blue
wind became an Atlantic cove to float in,
and the air centered itself in small purple
butterflies flitting among the weed flowers.
In the darkening city we returned to,
our privacy completed the cafés of strangers
— Donald Hall
For a while, when looking up my old address on Google Maps, the Street View image would show a broken dressing table outside the house. My girlfriend and I had broken up or at least decided on a break and we were in the process of moving out of the house, an old two-storey terrace with a front door that opened directly onto the footpath. In the Street View image, alongside the broken table is its large mirror, propped against the wall reflecting my car parked across the street. You could rotate around in Street View and see my car, registration is obscured, loaded with boxes ready to leave.
“There is nothing certain except that nothing is certain, and nothing more wretched than Man nor arrogant.”
— Pliny (inscribed on the ceiling in Montaigne’s library)