First of all, “…they were surrounded on all sides by echoes and images of themselves, in a world where image and object had not yet torn themselves apart” is one of the most poetic phrasings I’ve ever heard.
Third, the original opens with: “Every so often, I get the urge to drag someone into a cave, and show them something unspeakable.”
I had another point, but it got lost in the artful prose of this article.
I feel like “every so often, I get the urge to drag someone into a cave and show them something unspeakable” is something that’s okay for a paleolithic cave art expert to say, but like, absolutely no one else
This is some good writing, especially since it starts as a rant. But there’s no regulation that says a rant can’t be done in graceful language, and there’s plenty of it here.
“…we’ll push him into one of its huge, damp, cool cathedral-halls of
fractured rock, where the darkness and the vastness of empty space seem
to press themselves tightly against your skin, close and clawed and
ancient.”
Ever been in a cave complex when they turn out the lights for a few seconds?
I experienced this in the caves of Cheddar Gorge many years ago (I don’t know if they do it any more) and it’s as if the vaulting emptiness of the cave inverts, changing from open to enclosed and filled with a blackness so opaque you can feel it like the moisture in fog.
Read the whole article; read it for the rant, read it for the rest, but also read it for the words.
shealwaysreads 