Sea Level *

rising out of the ground * a concrete layer of grey cutting into the grey of the air, grey edges around the icy grass, grey ripples of the canal, grey streets, grey buildings, an undulating but adamant (relentless?) greyness you call ‘a vinex-wijk next to the sea’ * the battle against the sea * the war on water * the reclaiming of land * reclaiming as if it were reparation * what was the initial claim? * and then when was it taken? * it’s heavy on you, this flatness, the sharpness of all the angles * 200 meters long * even monochromes have corners, splinters, staples, nails * this grey * is it a climate or a culture? * you say it’s a combination of arrogance and ignorance * you say dullness can also cut * a chill that creeps between the layers, braids itself through the stitches * water resistance is the first element of style * countless euros in polyurethane, worth more than cashmere and silk, but still, everything, damp * another 200 meters * remembered light * if you had to claim a home, home would be that light * the blue of the sky as light shines through it, tumbling those little grey cells into iridescent bubbles * a good thing * a lightness in the body * a different person * no, not a different person, but a different kind of time * it expands, every minute a possibility, every hue a sequence of sensations, vibrant * there you can see time * here is the perpetual postbellum * war was waged, and for what? * an Action, an Aldi, a carpark, een Italiaans tentje * uniform rows of houses on uniformly flat ground * then rows and rows of flat ground, farmland * some would call this the sublime * others would make it the depository (waste heap?) for our virtual excess * the ground resists * will it forgive? * there, now consumed by flames * here, still saturated with damp * the artwork is an insistence (adamant?) on the sublime * translate anxiety into terror * translate emptiness into vastness * translate space into composition * a note saved on your phone: * If there were no wars in this world, where would you be sitting? Who would you be sitting next to? * for all its comfort, not in this null * and yet now, still, you are here * walking along the bottom of the sea * rising to sea level * when you turn back * a figure with arms spread, one foot in front of the other like on a tightrope, further and further out on that perfectly steady horizon * you wonder how far he will go before he turns back * fearful of the lengthening grey beneath his feet * turning along the edge, but not back * a leap off the concrete, arms extended longer * that very same blue, flapping against the darkened mud * Happiness floats, a poet wrote, it doesn’t need you to hold it down * time lengthens to 200 meters * elke minuut, elk klein geluk * there is no other home, there is no other world * except here * where he’ll always find his way next to you * laughing at your fear * ‘The ground is so soft, how could it hurt me?’ 

* Richard Serra, Sea Level (1996), Zeewolde.