The rain poured down while the smoke went up. The tower lit up the night and I knew then, standing on the street below, tears melting into raindrops, that sixteen years of work were being incinerated before me and that even the attempts of heaven could not quell the flames.
What do you do with yourself after that? Some people said it was freeing. Freeing from what? My passion? If anything, all that work weighed on me all the more, as I fought to remember it all, and summon the will to remake it.
I could move on. Do something else. But what does that say? That it was so unimportant that we can all just forget it? That at some point, someone, not me, will come along and accidentally retread my steps, or was it simply never going to come into the world? That version of it will never exist again.
All things end, some before they begin.
Paddy Dobson
13th January 2023