Ice Cream

Gazing from one of the balconies, down into the Dantesque, steely, glassy hub of the huge new shopping mall in Dundrum, it is easy to feel slightly overwhelmed by the sheer manyness of us. The notion of our 'culture' seems like a very bad joke, closer to something one finds in a lab. Lines from Josef Brodsky's cheerful 'Song of Welcome' run through my mind:

"Here's your swarm and your huge beehive.
Welcome to that there's roughly five
billion like you alive."

Nearer to six billion by now I think.

Better to watch the worlds within worlds, the people (teenagers mainly) who gather viable islands within the droning human mass. This was taken just as I was heading back to the car. I like their sense of cohesion, of easy togetherness. Children tend to make their own corners anywhere.