More notes on buildings and cities traversed, abandoned and re-populated.
The ruined control tower (this paragraph is the distilled essence of Ballard):
A helicopter flight.
As they sped along the highway the young woman flinched against the door pillar, eyes fixed on the huge trucks swaying beside them. Talbert put his arm around her, pulling her onto his shoulder. He steered the heavy car with one hand, swinging it off the motorway towards the airfield. "Relax, Karen." In a mimicry of Dr Nathan's voice, he added. "You're a mere modulus, my dear." He looked down at the translucent skin over the anterior triangle of her neck, barely hiding its scenarios of nerve and blood-vessel. Marker lines sped past them, dividing and turning. The helicopter waited below the ruined control tower. He pulled her from the car, then buttoned his flying jacket around her shoulders. [Ballard, Atrocity Exhibition, 85]
Some food companies have factories that are mothballed until harvest/market time. One such in France opens for two months a year to receive and shear corn cobs, tin them, cook them in their tins, and label them. Then it hibernates again.
adj.Land left dry... adandoned ships: cf ships in the dunes of the Namibian Skeleton and Diamond Coasts.
1. Deserted by an owner or keeper; abandoned.
2. Run-down; dilapidated.
3. Neglectful of duty or obligation; remiss. See Synonyms at negligent.
n.
1. Abandoned property, especially a ship abandoned at sea.
2. A homeless or jobless person; a vagrant.
3. Law. Land left dry by a permanent recession of the water line.
[Latin derelictus, past participle of derelinquere, to abandon : de-, de- + relinquere, to leave behind; see relinquish.]
History of London as a settlement, from myth through to history: Troia Nova (New Troy, legend), CaerLudein (legend), Plowonida (pre-Roman), Londinium (Roman), Lundenwic (Saxon, near Aldwych, Londinium lay abandoned down-river at this time), Lundenburgh, London...
Read more: Ackroyd, London a Biography.
Calvino:
international journeys as much as short journeys in the city are no longer an exploration of a series of different places; they are simply movements from one point to another between which there is an empty interval, a discontinuity, a parenthesis above the clouds if it as air trip, and a parenthesis beneath the earth it is a city journey. ['Hermit in Paris' in Hermit in Paris]
Thoughts on "Gukanjima - View of an Abandoned Island" - Coal was discovered in 1810 on a Japanese island reef, it became densely built-up, to be abandoned in 1974 when the coal ran out.
Looming above the ocean, it appeared a concrete labyrinth of many-storied apartment houses and mining structures built closely together. Seen from the ocean, the silhouette of the island closely resembled a battleship - so, the island came to be called Gunkanjima, or Battleship island.
Previous notes:
Comments