TM Prompt #353: Barren
I was listening to an internet broadcast the other day. I downloaded it from the iTunes, and put it on my player, and I listened to it as I was doing chores. (I live with two boys and you would think they were never taught to pick up after themselves.)
In this podcast, they spoke to a female scientist who talked about this old mining pit. The pit was closed down in I think it was the 1980s, and when it was closed down the company that had made it - this huge hole in a hill - turned off the pump that sucked ground water from the area. Consequently, a puddle formed. And it grew bigger. And bigger. And bigger.
The puddle became a lake. But the water was blood red. And black. And green. The minerals in the ground combined with the ground water and made a poisoned late. A flock of geese landed there one night, drank some of the water, and the next morning were all dead, with the water eating them from the inside out.
This was a place that was not devoid of life. It was the opposite of life.
I believe that is true barrenness. Not a place that simply discourages growth, but a place where life is exterminated.
I have seen these places.
Black sand fused into glass by a cancerous sun. Long, twisted shadows fused to stone in their last agony. Clanking, thoughtless machines endlessly repeating domestic tasks long after their flesh and blood masters have been obliterated. Thick plumes of smoke that burn your lungs and bring bile to your throat.
There are places where you do not see the sky and monsters wait to devour you with many arms and long, sharp tongues. The only life there exists to bring us all closer to our ultimate end.
In the middle of a dessert there is a castle, or a tower. There are no lizards, no scorpions, no water, no vegetation. Locked inside the castle, in the tower, is a locked room. That terrible secret, that, that is barren.
Barren.
(Can a heart be so?
It is not so.
It was not so.
And God forbid it should be so.)
In this podcast, they spoke to a female scientist who talked about this old mining pit. The pit was closed down in I think it was the 1980s, and when it was closed down the company that had made it - this huge hole in a hill - turned off the pump that sucked ground water from the area. Consequently, a puddle formed. And it grew bigger. And bigger. And bigger.
The puddle became a lake. But the water was blood red. And black. And green. The minerals in the ground combined with the ground water and made a poisoned late. A flock of geese landed there one night, drank some of the water, and the next morning were all dead, with the water eating them from the inside out.
This was a place that was not devoid of life. It was the opposite of life.
I believe that is true barrenness. Not a place that simply discourages growth, but a place where life is exterminated.
I have seen these places.
Black sand fused into glass by a cancerous sun. Long, twisted shadows fused to stone in their last agony. Clanking, thoughtless machines endlessly repeating domestic tasks long after their flesh and blood masters have been obliterated. Thick plumes of smoke that burn your lungs and bring bile to your throat.
There are places where you do not see the sky and monsters wait to devour you with many arms and long, sharp tongues. The only life there exists to bring us all closer to our ultimate end.
In the middle of a dessert there is a castle, or a tower. There are no lizards, no scorpions, no water, no vegetation. Locked inside the castle, in the tower, is a locked room. That terrible secret, that, that is barren.
Barren.
(Can a heart be so?
It is not so.
It was not so.
And God forbid it should be so.)