An island; a tiny blade of knotted rock jutting out of the sea. Upon its point a man sits on a perilous crag, suspended above white waves that break against the broken stone teeth below the cliffs. He is thinking about the universe; his place in it and the place of all things. He is thinking about time; its contradictory nature and its profound meaninglessness. He is thinking about happiness against the grand scale of these things. He is thinking about boundaries and what constitutes as the rock under his legs or the wind across his fingers or the hair on his head or if there is any difference between the sea in his eyes and the soul in his brain. He is thinking about these things in this windy and dangerous hide above the sea because it is the only place he can think of these things. There is nothing here that can distract him from his thoughts, except the thoughts themselves. As a gull wheels though the sky he wonders if the bird ever thinks about more than itself and then he thinks about how he is going to get home with the tide coming in.
Paddy Dobson
19th September 2021