Journal entry, written at a refugee camp in Ethiopia, aged 23 © Greg Cummings
Sun, Nov 17th ‘85
As a crescent moon sets in the west wrapped in whisps of cloud, Jupiter follows closely like an older brother. The mountains open up to devour them, and the stars become brighter - a choir of a billion worlds rising to a crescendo of light, like the chorus of Beethoven’s choral movement from the Ninth. Now the moon is a Cheshire grin brimming on the edge of the black mountains; Jupiter, it’s one eye released from a wink, behind. A wink and a grin ‘good night’ and the chorus of the sky erupts.
Camp Bete's agents are asleep in their tents - “From Jarusalem with Love” - sunk deep in a pool of dreams from another place far away - a starker reality. The sporadic voices of refugees in their village under the stars, sing a distant rhythm of life, a promise of a more hopefull life, but the end of a different promise. Like the Cheshire grin of the moon now burried, the chorus of a greater calm now stronger, these brief journeys of salvation must wane, and the celebration of life, the ebbing formal flux of existence, must become itself again.
A Hyena whoops in the distance.
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