The common ground between Murtal and Fonte dos Amores sits upon two ideas: that of ambiguity and that of desertification.

a) Regarding the desertification: Murtal is a space of transition, of un-happenings. Deserted by those who only go there to sleep. Fonte dos Amores is dysfunctional and eroded by the times. Deserted by every driver that speeds through it.

b) On ambiguity: The observable status of stagnation is understood from our very personal perspective of those places. This doesn’t take into account the narratives that have once permeated them nor those that will do so in the future.

All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation.

— Burnt Norton, T. S. Eliot

1. THIS IS THE
STATUS OF DEATH.

Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment.

— Little Gidding, T. S. Eliot

These things have served their purpose: let them be.

— Little Gidding, T. S. Eliot

2. IT’S BORN FROM THE USE OF A TIME SCALE RELATIVE TO OUR
OWN EGOS.
3. WE PERCEIVE THE END OF THINGS IN A SUBJECTIVE MANNER.

History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

— Little Gidding, T. S. Eliot

There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless

— Dry Salvages, T. S. Eliot

4. WE FRAME THIS PERCEPTION AS
ONE OF “END”

We cannot think of a time that is oceanless.

— Dry Salvages, T. S. Eliot

HALTED

click and drag to move around

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution

— Dry Salvages, T. S. Eliot

5. BECAUSE, WE CAN’T FATHOM THE LAYERS OF DEVELOPMENT THAT CAME BEFORE AND WILL COME AFTER.

Time the destroyer is time the preserver.

— Dry Salvages, T. S. Eliot

6. ALL WE GRASP IS THE DEMISE OF ACTIVITY UPON THOSE PLACES.

Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement

— Dry Salvages, T. S. Eliot

7. SUCH A THING DOESN’T MEAN THIS DEMISE IS ETERNAL.
IT SIMPLY HIGHLIGHTS OUR HUMAN COMPREHENSION OF IT.

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

— East Coker, T. S. Eliot

8. THESE SPACES ARE IN A PERMANENT LOADING: STUCK BETWEEN THEIR DOOM AND THE ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES THAT COULD AVOID IT.