'Firing the Canon' exhibition, Goldsmiths student union gallery

II

Later, though he didn’t know how much. It didn’t really matter. The grey ground of compacted ash was springy beneath his feet. What were once walking boots now cadaverous and bound with twine and strings. Soaked and dried hundreds of times. The sky was still grey but different. A colder, blank, cloudless, pale grey. What trees were still standing had no branches, let alone leaves. They appeared like cracks in the paint of the sky, splintering up from the blackened skirting board of blasted country that stretched out before him.

Occasionally he would cross a concrete forecourt of some kind, its borders and edges concealed by a grey carpet of ash and leaves almost fossilised. The resident buildings long since rendered featureless and bleached. Paint peeling, functionless, they all looked the same now. Not even birds to leave droppings on the windowsills or crow in the echoing interiors. Where had the birds gone?

All he could remember was that the first things to go were her and the little animal. What had started as a choice, ended as one. And so it was that some time ago they seemed to have ceased. It was almost as if he couldn’t remember if they had been there or not. But something, a decision, had been made. Everything else probably followed. Such is the power of intention.

It was cold again.

And the people. Before, he had seen them moving on the horizon, or in windows. From inside and out. Heard their exchanges. Watched their jaws moving. Uncomprehending, mystified by their codes. What formula to their ritual conversing? What values did they hold? No door to speak of. No entrance. It didn’t matter anyway. They were gone now. Just like everything.

It was disturbing, when every once in a while, she seemed as alien to him as everyone else.

I

We took the animal to the woods, me and her.
We, its parents took it on a walk. Where we had walked for a long time before, for passages of time. During which we figured and discussed everything that we saw, as we walked. And we saw a lot. More than we’d ever seen before. Open-eyed.

Before, the words would pass between us in beams of understanding from our eyes. The animal grew. Always trotting in front at our feet. Little antlers pointed forward. Its black eyes glinting. We looked on it with a creator’s love. And the woods, The bright green leaves covered the darker greens in layers and screening the brilliant cerulean overhead, simultaneously deep and bright. The heat was sometimes intense.

Now though the sky is cool and grey, with defined cloud. The tiniest breeze soothed. The leaves were a warm brown in the overhead canopy and made up the crunchy forest floor. We knew we’d come here for a different reason this time as we made our way between and past houses near to mine. Some houses were just like mine. Paths ran alongside quiet roads with cobbled stone walls. The outlying surroundings.

Walking with our animal, our faces turned down with the understanding as we walked, sloping forward over the carpet of leaves. Over the miniature woodland hills and between the trees. This time, only necessary exchanges, final agreements, using old mechanisms of reason long ago forged. Peaceful but agreed.

We’ll never go there again, to where we took our little animal. We may talk about it but we’ll never walk there again. Its eyes always trusting. Its trot always content. The brutality will fade, and time will make it seem less of a butchery.

The only problem is that without people, there is no such thing as a reasonable decision. And sometimes the reality of this becomes apparent.