Ruined
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
I first became aware of the power of that one word ruin when reading the poetry of Gerald Stern. It seems the very opposite of beauty, and yet how close the two words are often found on a page—how near and next of kin are beauty and ruin. Yesterday, reading Colum McCann on the train, there was that word again, often. When Michael Ondaatje speaks the word it is all shush and reverence.
"When we contemplate ruins, we contemplate our own future," Christopher Woodward wrote in In Ruins.
Is that how it is for you, or is it just this thing that happens to the incurably love-riddled melancholy?
4 comments:
Ruins are mysterious and fascinating. That's my take on it. Often moonlit too. Though I have to admit, on the subject of moons, that I roll my eyes at all the full moons in movies. You'd never think anything important happens any other day of the month.
Ruin and ruins are two different things. For me, ruins suggests history, and ruin to bring destruction. Sometimes destruction can be a beautiful thing though, especially afterwards when the rebuild begins.
There is a special place in the Japanese aesthetic for things that bring beauty and ruin together. They call it sabi when they love things because they are faded or rusty or overgrown. I hear they will sometimes repair a bowl not invisibly, but filling the broken places with gold so you will notice the cracks more.
Cuileann's words & thoughts on this are beautiful. There's something hopeful about being ruined, something that begs one to rebuild oneself into something new and better.
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