Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

Magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting

ecology, culture, and spirituality.

In our final installment of Chapter 2 of Living with the Unknown on the theme of ashes, we enter a fictive world

dominated by the monotony and tireless momentum of greed. In this short story from

Icelandic writer Andrade Seneermagnos, time expands and collapses as paving stones begin to dominate the physical landscape of a bleak

suburb on the outskirts of Reykjavik, and the mental landscape of the architect charged with

their installation.

I'm fascinated by time. Sometimes whole years pass, evoking only a few memories, while some moments are captured at such high resolution in my mind, I could zoom in and uncover endless split-second details.

One such moment is happening right now. I've just picked up a concrete paving stone, swung it with my right hand, and let it fly in the direction of a 2020 range rover Vogue.

I watch the stone spin slowly as it approaches the driver's side window.

Time is so interesting, how it's possible to zoom in on a single moment.

One corner of the stone is now touching the window, which is

still intact. It will inevitably break, and there will be consequences. But I did not throw

the stone in haste or panic. It was a well-considered decision. As I'm thinking this, it's as if the paving stone has formed a small depression in the car window,

not unlike how the water and a geyser expands into a sphere at the surface before it shoots into the air.

I'm not an extremist.

I'm very ordinary just to make it clear.

I've never gotten into trouble with the law

and never broke windows during my time

at elementary school in Arpaerskoli,

...