The Weight of History

The frozen parade of granite faces stared down at them, though those observed seldom stared back up. There was no need, no benefit in acknowledging the immovable presence of the past. If anything it was a self-imposed torture to try, an opening up to acidic intrusions on lives lived in rough and tender skin. The past had left the stone faces. Stern monoliths in vaguely human form engraved into an inhuman surface. A cryptic message or judgement or warning, hewn from the cliff face by hands whose owners, certain as they may have been in their work, had left no clues to inform the uninitiated of its purpose.

It made the faces both impossible to ignore and hard to care about. Especially as the immediacy of life lay at eye level. Readily demanding without the need to crane necks in search of mystic incomprehension.

And it was as the stolidly current humans faced all that was on their level that the past decided to collapse on them. A plethora of faces were scattered by tremors forcing their way out from even deeper in the rock of the landscape than they were. All sent gurning, screaming and roaring down from the cliff side to smash into the present. Rolling to staring halts before half-hearted observers, suddenly forced out of their once all consuming time and place and knocked into confusion by the past’s sudden invasion. Long neglected granite eyes now laughing, scorning and longing for the descendants of their creators.

No one died. Not through the avalanche of rocks at least. But life was left bruised and rattled by the ominous collapse. Through uncertainty questions proliferated, through discomfort they went unanswered. Was some distant point buried beneath their own ancestry angry at their habitually averted eyes? Disappointed at the level stares of lives lived solely in the present? Even enraged at what they’d seen through inert irises during their long and silent observance? Even now the faces blockaded and punctuated the movement of the living they gave nothing away but their presence.

People drifted away after that. Shying away from their ignorance to the wants and desires of their oppressive inheritance. Whatever the past was, whatever it wanted, they could find no way to serve it.

Inertia is all
an absolute for fleeting drama to play against
Trees forming on tired rock
people walking on tired land
novelties to impress the unimpressable inert

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