About the picture hanging in the waiting area at the office

“My wings are ready to take flight
I would gladly return
for if I stayed, even in these lively times
I would have little luck.
Gerhard Scholem, Greetings from the Angelus

There is a painting by Klee called *Angelus Novus*. It depicts an angel who looks as if he is about to turn away from something he is staring at. His eyes are wide open, his mouth is agape, and his wings are spread wide. The angel of history must look like this. He has turned his face toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us , he sees a single catastrophe that ceaselessly piles ruin upon ruin and hurls them at his feet. He would surely like to linger, to rouse the dead and piece together what has been shattered. But a storm blows from Paradise, which has caught itself in his wings and is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him inexorably into the future, to which he turns his back, while the heap of rubble before him grows toward the sky. What we call progress is this storm.

Walter Benjamin: On the Concept of History, XI