The Prison of the Beautiful

This is B?sdalafossur waterfall in the Faroe Islands. It's a lake that drains to the ocean far below. It's a collision of geology and meteorology in resplendent fashion.

I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that for every beautiful landscape, every natural wonder, every breathtaking vista that I come across in my journeys, there's a wholly different world that exists outside of this bubble. It's prone to violence, to malevolence, to hate and ill-formed reason. It's formed from the iron of the earth into weapons that murder, destroy, rend, and tear. It's brutal both in its application and its methods. My heart aches for the hapless victims that have found their paths cut short. This isn't picking sides: I will choose love over and over and over again regardless of theology and diplomacy at the end of a rifle barrel.

Millions of years have gone into this moment captured above. Trillions of tidal incursions, tectonic shifts, and storming have led to the separate of ocean and lake, of rock and sky, and cliffs from their pairs far below the surface of the water. We're able to peer back into primordial history, to see what modern humanity has only recently been able to understand and fathom, and wonder at its incredible presentation.

If you were to see this scene, what stories would you tell? How would you begin to describe the indescribable, the thundering power of the sea battering down the door to the lake beyond? It's a tale for mythology, of the gods that reached down to carve for themselves a place on this earth where they could look out beyond the horizon and see humanity's mean estate. Or something of that nature.

To get to this spot in the present day, weather permitting, is a trek across the Tr?lanípan Trail, winding its way across the various cliff edges and sheep trails to end at tumbled stones and water. It's not perilous by any stretch, save the tempests blowing wind and rain like hammers at your body. It's an experience of spirit, soul, body, and mind and requires all of your faculties to be attuned to the end goal of getting to the waterfall.

The result is what you see here. I prefer the darkness, the greys, the prison of the beautiful that offsets the piercing sun and its glory. I love the trails of mist and water smoke, the fomenting waves crashing upon the shores, the hammering rains that seek to find purchase on equipment and body. I love the greens and mottled stones, the richness of the ocean swells in cerulean blues, aqua greens, and gradients between. I love the offsets of light and dark, of the angels and demons, gods and their human chattel found in the shadows.

I love this land, this people, this place. I find it a happily inhabitable prison of the beautiful and I would that you could find yourself here, if only for the briefest moments in time.

Today, as I sit here at my desk back in the almost-mundane Ireland, I'm faced with the duality of our humanity: the wonderment countenanced to the terrible; the questing and seeking countenanced to the devastating and devouring. I find myself torn between our need for sovereignty and safety, and our alliances with those who serve our interests the most. We are a prison unto ourselves, really.

As I said before, it's not about picking sides, not about one nation above the other. We will fail if we insist on a winner and a loser. We will fail when we consider our needs above those who surround us. We are a selfish people, regardless of origin, race, creed, religion, and other categorical boxes we put ourselves in. It's an ugliness that I despair of, yet it has defined our existence since time immemorial.

My beloved souls, I can only ask that you love with every fibre of your being those who seem unlovable. I'd ask that you forgive even when every impulse is to retreat to fear and hate. I can only ask for volitionally, it's yours to enact. But imagine, if only for a moment, what our world would be should we seek the good of the many rather than the whims of the few?

Be light in the darkness, hope to the hopeless, safe harbour to those in storms immeasurable.

May it ever be so.

#narrative?#faith?#hope?#love?#creativecollective?#originalwriting?#travel?#monday?#PostPhotos?#PostPhoto?#postphotos?#photo?#photos?#postplaces?#society?#originalcontent?#bethechange?#nature?#photography?#travelpost?#travelpostie?#reflections?#road?#drama?#senses?#art?#writing?#moments?#live?#light?#opportunity?#stories?#landscape?#family?#resolute?#MadeonPost?#soul?#path?#reflection?#narrative?#pursuit?#living?#FaroeIslands #Faroes #ocean #cliffs #sea #lake #beauty #war