Whimsical Musings of a Loon

Tentatively stepping past the strange woods where trees marry metal fences, the overgrown grass submerges the concrete pathway underneath my feet. Suddenly autumn has been switched onto 11, the leaves are golden and raining delicately around me, yet the sun is shouting down creating gorgeous colour pallets. Every now and then, you hear movement, but it never shows. The brambles shake, a voice worms through the air. It's that sensation you are being monitored. A small glacial ripple slithers across my skin. As I continue forwards, the branches part reluctantly like unveiling the curtain to the red and yellow bricked beauty that lies beneath. There it stands. Just. The red roofs and towers still tall, the distinctive 19th century architecture crumbling but still standing. Just. It is hard to imagine Heino Schmieden, the famous German architect, seeing his creation now. Watching his magnificent construction, once proud and grand, now decaying and withering away. The corr...

Auschwitz   The gate of iron, the outrageous lies; That work sets free, yet in truth? All dies. Endless horizon, eyes become sore; Claws of barbed wire, for ever more. Red brick, red brick; a sickening trick. Row after row, all the same; Horrifically normal; even mundane. Reality hits, slapped out of slumber. Terror, fear; it’s more than a number. Mountainous items- bags, clothes, a bowl; Each different shoe, belonged to a soul; A life that sang, laughed and cried; A life so taken, cruelly, and died. Wrong indeed, and without cover- To believe one life, more value than another. Cannot un-see; it won’t be rid; Tattooed right into, your closed eyelid. But atrocities we, cannot spurn; Even though it seems, we never learn. I recently visited Auschwitz and here are the photos I took:   I am still processing the experience. It was unlike any other. Something in the pit of my stomach was gnawing the whole time; I think the place surprised me in ways...