with all the clarity of dust in the glass air of the approaching dusk this is knowledge that a satellite could not extract

friday, the 27th of May

The man had his back curved between us and the window. His elbows were handling the bar in a familiar way, which you do if you are a glass or an elbow, so the effect is total.
And so to begin to hear in their own speech, the words that call up an acknowledgement of the initiations and inductions that scoop a communities humanity as they chronicle the progress of 2 centuries of settlement.
We settle in and listen, made possible because in this place we are acceptable. The way for there to be a way, is to be acceptable. The printed word and all the faded photographs, such things are bandages for the illiterate. Call it "pride", call it "sacrifice", but it is just blood that has been let. The first senses - to be and, now, to listen - these accompany the recogniser in their path for truth, and we know that some combination of forces has extracted from an autonomous life some holy thing. I do not know what word to give it, I think to name it would take from it anyway.
Depletion of the natural resources, I keep quiet and hear it from your mouth. Fabric of history, obvious, continuous, now in these calm hours as you converse it, in this conducive environment, the acceptance makes ease and it can be transmitted, it can grow into record. Such things that are not transmitted, appear in the chronicles as glaring omissions that analytical, quick minds stare blankly at, unable to access. You need to have somebody whose eyes become their own as they talk to you, who speak in their own pace of the things that required certain calibrations made to the actions and capacities of others, always others, in the past that is a faroff country and know why these buildings were built. You need to have somebody whose hands make the most sense out of anything, this day, yesterday on a plane, these hands with a million ancestors.
And eventhough he has not said it, nor come anywhere close to saying it, if I wrote a book in the momentum of this encounter, and he was the sensitive protagonist, this much is what I know he knows:
As of yet, I still believe in unknown things.