The Edge Of The World

I was at the time I wrote this piece at a particular location. A location we've all visited and shall again. But never at the same time, and rarely in the same place...

This place is like the edge of the world….

 

As I stand here and watch the sun break through the clouds in a beautiful and yet somehow ominous display -  that’s the thought that occurs. I’m speaking in an entirely metaphorical medium naturally, as geographically speaking it’s nothing of the kind. It’s a decidedly underwhelming architectural offering half way between Wolverhampton and Walsall. There are many across the world. But they all mean the same.

 

And yet for so many, the edge of the world is precisely what this place is, or at least; what it represents. How many I wonder, came here to die today. More chillingly; how many more are dying now as I gaze listlessly at the skyline? And to me more chilling even than that is the thought; how many more came here today to be told they are going to die? How many are having that awful sentence delivered upon them at this very moment?

It’s odd in a sense that we as a race shudder so at the phrase “you’re going to die”. As it is after all the only true certainty that this thing we call life has to offer us. However; like a quarterly electricity bill or sudden bowel movements, the imposing of a time span upon our meanderings on the face of this planet is utterly unwelcome. We hate it. Arrogant of us as a species in a way perhaps?

As if we’re saying “No! There were so many things I was going to do; like revolutionise the alphabet, and redefine musical composition….” We see quite content to waste away our precious hours minutes and seconds in this life. Just as long as we know there’s no great rush. We can always “get round to it”. But in a place like this they can put paid to your days of “getting around” to anything.

They can rob you of your excuses.

 

There are no prejudices here, there cant be. In a place such as this each that enters is the same as the next, in a sense divested of all that they are; however vast or diminutive. When crossing over the threshold of this domain we are in reality (whether we like it or not) robbed of our power, disengaged from control of any kind. We put our worries and woes " our very lives even, in the hands of people we’ve never met. Faces we’ve never know. Even the most godless of us praying internally, subconsciously, that all will be well……

 

There’s no class system inside this establishments walls, no time need or want for the moronic racial prejudices that prevail back in the real world……. This place exists almost separately from civilised society that surrounds it. Merely ministering unto the needs of it’s populace, curing their ills or diagnosing their demise. Killing us softly on a daily, no hourly basis, with clean clinical smiles and it’ll be alright nods. Never in the trappings of one relatively small place could joy and despair be held simultaneously or in such grand measure. For it occurs to me also that just as I am now surrounded by the dying, the wretched, the weak, I’m surrounded also by those that have only just embarked upon the journey of life. The fledglings of this long road that we travel. Those same faceless one’s that we trust to make us better, to tell us when our time is up. They too are the hands by which we are delivered into the mortal realm that we inhabit. They are in a very real sense treated almost as the keepers of life. Helping us on our way when the time comes to live, and cruelly transformed into harbingers of doom when the time is finally up…..

 

As I depart this vanishing point and return gratefully to the world of complacency and it’s sheep. I reflect finally upon the truly supernatural standing held by this place. It is in essence a gateway. The point of entry where our story begins, the site of many pit stops on the way, not all of them part of our road. But rather a point in the course of someone else’s whom we accompany. Sometimes even at their end. Secretly so very thankful that it is not our own…… And ultimately, irrevocably and inevitably the place where we are either sentenced to our ultimate fate, or we arrive at it.

 

This place is like the edge of the world.

 

Don’t look down…..

Author's Note

I was in a sombre contemplative place when I wrote this.
I'd be honoured to hear what everyone thinks of the little piece.

Reviews

[Leigh]

This is a nice piece to read and it raises some good points, I like the geographical references, that gives it a reality a grounding, surprised there are no other reviews, it would be interesting to know what others think

[Brett Pritchard]

Thank you very much, review much appreciated sir! 😊