Nothing is sadder than a human living in a cave…


Even the simplest mud hut is a palace when compared to a cave (or something that looks like a cave). A human can find no peace or reach the deepest parts of sleep while sheltered by a cave, sheltered by something shaped entirely by natural forces. This understanding, of course, is what saves the ending of Melancholia…

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...