“I watched a family of about 8 persons, a man and a woman both about 50 with their children of about 1, 8, and 10 and 2 grown-up daughters of about 20-24.” (Sergeant Nibley PhD  by Gustave Gilbert)

A scene is created.

“Then I heard a series of shots.” (Sergeant Nibley PhD  by Gustave Gilbert)

A scene is destroyed. Ripped apart. Torn with a shot that split apart fabric; a veil of silence. The ensuing silence is magnified by the memory of that single tear in tranquility.

Split.

Slashed.

Shredded.

                      The sky is cracked. We peer from above as though looking at a specimen. Turn the coarse focus. Then the fine focus. We need to magnify the view and focus the lenses to get a closer look.

The intertwining fingers of a leaf and the arm of a tree lose grip.

It falls; we walk.

Crack.

The brittle shell of what used to be is now not to be.

From the inaccessible peaks in the Alps, we glance down from a safe precipice.

We observe the Edelweiss grow, and on the greyest days, the ground and sky seemed to melt into one and suddenly there was no horizon. Just grey.

After all, don’t “gray foxes and gray wolves bargain eye to eye, […]”?

 

     I wish someone would sprinkle the sea upon the ground; let dew drops become a lake of continuous remembrance; revitalize the “portrait” on the ground, not a “picture”.

                  But instead of water, there is snow, uniting the ground under a powdery layer of white dust. Still, people sit in cozy cafes, sipping on scorching black coffee, enjoying and treading on white powdered donuts, where they would walk forwards and end up right back where they started, in the comfort of “kingdoms of black and white” (Reading The Brothers Grimm to Jenny by Lisel Mueller)

 

Those people were Edelweiss flowers; growing in the midst of harsh mountain climates. They blossom. And die. And blossom again. We observe them, and we know – in life – in death- in every state before and after and in between.

Everything changes, but nothing ever really does.

Not in our “kingdom” (Reading The Brothers Grimm to Jenny by Lisel Mueller).

Split.

Slashed.

Shredded.

…Still the same.

 

References:

Angie-Pictures. Here I Am. Digital image. Deviant Art, n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2015. <http://angie-pictures.deviantart.com/art/Here-I-am-176764373>.

Alamy. Digital image. Is It Too Hot for the Edelweiss? Alpine Plants Could Become Extinct as Summer Gets Warmer. Mail Online, n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2015. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2083967/Edelweiss-plants-A-risk-extinct-summers-gets-warmer.htmll>.