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March 22, 2004
Investment Potential
This is a shoutout to Heronbone, all-recording tapehead with interesting playback problems, lonely bleeding dictionary, a twitcher with no travelcard, the dark eye of Dog's Isle. And that's because it involves both birdwatching and german poetry. Coming home, I saw a heron standing in a pool on top of a hill that overlooks the atlantic ocean. I braked the van as quietly as possible (ie not very) and inevitably the bird dragged itself back into the sky in that unfeasibly slow way that they have. And I thought simultaneously of this poem, of HB, and of my own sightings along the Limehouse Cut, swans, herons, guillemots, there used to be a nest of foxes opposite our flat, squatting in an abandoned concrete hut (never heard them at night though, now I hear foxes a lot, terrifying sound of their shrieking, an apparent mixture of horrific pain and wild exhilaration). Went through London on the journey from east to west coast, for a bit of a nostalgia kick, and saw that Chrisp street is being fucking gentrified after all, a huge tinted-glass gimcrack apartment building is rising up opposite All Saints church, and the previously scummy shopping area has started to sprout a tinted glass (don't blame me if its repetitive) 'flagship store'. The pioneers have arrived. We always had a sense when living there that things had not been left to rot merely through neglect, that somewhere, people were waiting, people powerful and rich enough to be in no hurry...until the vector of decline, unchecked by either hopeless indigeneous population or nominal civic authorities, had reached far enough to raise the profit margin to trigger point and then...whoosh. Wipe out what's left of the native population, kill 'em or send 'em to Canvey Island, what's the diff, a nice lump sum for their crumbling concrete hovels (more than it's worth, mate) and they'll disappear from the scene. It's all a question of resource, of stamina. Some crumbled...couldn't psychically afford to stay, to sit tight for the big payoff, moved out. Some wouldn't, or couldn't leave, became habituated to the filth, and fair's fair, they'll get theirs, but you can bet they'll be getting comparatively little compared to the profit-forecasts of those who control the future.
Puppet-masters work from outside. Remote control investments: nomadic, autonomous currencies that come home swollen, years later, no questions asked. Oh yes, they can afford to wait, they're already in the future, they can sit out the siege in comfort. And now they own a bit more of the future.
There's probably an heritage centre committee already...museum of east end life replaces Somerfield's; animatronic child-batting single mums, pie-and-mash pencil sharpeners in the museum shop, misty photos of beleaguered-looking oldies with their hard, withered leathery faces sitting by the marketplace with their cuppas amongst the broken bottles, dripping buckets of bloom pinned to pub facades and the recorded sound of guard dog snarls echoing down the canal path, bouncing from wall to wall in search of human contact.
Did you know that the real meaning of to invest is to besiege?
At least the river will know their demise, will watch every single pane of tinted glass crushed to dust, mixed with the toxic blood of early-heartattack bankers, sleighing backwards down the mudbanks on the flimsy unfolded magnolia walls of their boxy apartments, the chirp of rigor-mortis-claw-mobiles ebbing to damp gurgle and final, merciful, silent release. Carried away down the creek and out of existence. Because no matter how extensive the portfolio, no matter how comprehensive the risk management strategies, the river can always wait longer.
The Swan
The misery that through the still-undone
must pass, bound and heavily weighed down,
is like the awkward walking of the swan
And death, where we no longer comprehend
the very ground on which we daily stand,
is like his anxious letting-himself-go
into the water, soft against his breast,
which now how easily together flows
behind him in a little wake of waves...
while he, infinitely silent, self-possessed,
and ever more mature, is pleased to move
serenely on his majestic way.
Posted by robin at 02:06 AM | Comments (1)
East Coast Gothick, Part II
You have ruinous structures. And the most notable structures are the ecclesiastical.
"It so happens that the ciliff is at right angles to the actual structure which is, as you probably know, built east to west. Consequently there's a sequence: the nave goes, the east end, followed by the chancel and followed by the tower. But at the same time you have the churchyard going, with all the bones. And if we go back to the time of shall we say St Peters which was on the cliff, the graveyard was quite extensive and all the bones fell on the beach as the erosion progressed. These were collected up and reinterred in All Saints churchyard. And this of course would have meant that All Saints churchyard is packed with bones, they're not graves because they've been disturbed, you know. And here we are at the present time where bones have been falling out of All Saints churchyard, from the graveyard, for the last hundred years. And of course some of these people have already been buried once, even twice, they may have come from St Johns to St Peters and then to All Saints. And you can see all these bones at the bottom of the cliff, if you know where to look."
Posted by robin at 12:47 AM | Comments (2)
March 20, 2004
East Coast Gothick, part I
In Dunwich Wood, Time becomes Twisted
'I have always loathed flat and treeless country. Time there seems to dominate, it ticks remorselessly like a clock. But trees warp time, or rather create a variety of times: here dense and abrupt, there calm and sinuous - never plodding, mechanical, inescapably monotonous.' [John Fowles, The Tree]
Posted by robin at 12:51 PM | Comments (2)