Knight
This rider is standing and looking at the gate which used to lead to the manor estate.
But we cannot see it.
We cannot see the two branching roads beyond the gate either.
The rider is now standing at the intersection.
The town is situated at the intersection. The intersection of roads and railways, diseases and celebrations, love and death. The intersection also attracts their money. We are now standing at the treasury of Šiauliai and we see its former building but the treasury is no longer here.
The rider is standing all alone at this intersection. Maybe he is one of the Winged Hussars who happened to come here after the Battle of Kircholm? But the motifs on the knight’s chest and back seem somewhat familiar. Or maybe he came from the painting of The Battle of Grunwald by Jan Matejko?
He has been standing here for a while now. He probably forgot on which side he fought – on the side of those who won or those who were defeated? Who are the winners and who are the defeated hundreds of years down the line? And what being alone means?
You change, you are no longer yourself when you put your armour and helmet on. You are a part of a great force and you set out to fight darkness. The rider still holds a flag, and if there is a flag, there must be an army of souls. But we cannot see them. And even though we will not see this rider, he will head out through the gate that we cannot see to where the town’s oldest burial sites lie, which hark back to the times when Christ gathered his army 2,000 years ago, and death played here, at the very same place where people today play tennis.
And his horse can actually hear other horses neighing although we cannot hear them. Just a step away from here the manor house stables still stand.
Can you hear them?
This place is now home to the District Court of Šiauliai. But the truth is blind; it cannot see or hear anything. And the knights are fighting windmills.
Can you feel the wind?
Coordinates: 55.9329525, 23.3123808