two

Under railway bridge in Battersea

where I wrote a letter...

Do
you still hang your words in air,
ten years unfinished, glued to your
noticeboard, with gaps
or empties for the unimaginable phrase . . . ?

A scholar of the world's castoff concerns.

---

Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?



Elizabeth Bishop

Photos: Shoreham Harbour

wood

black cats

Neo-Egyptian Art Deco Carreras cigarette factory, apparently inspired by th discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun as well as the Temple of Bubas; Bubas was an Egyptian cat-headed goddess. A black cat was the emblem of the company, which made Craven A. Built 1926-8. Hampstead Road, Camden, London.

National Temperance Hospital - 1884; Hampstead road, Camden, London

free radicals

Len Lye - 1935

Selected films.

moorgate

Moorgate Street station was opened by the Metropolitan Railway in December 1865. Renamed Morgate in 1924. The ticket hall was opened on 2nd October 1936.

Moorgate - originally a postern in the 2nd century Roman London City Wall; during medieval times was built upon and altered. Moorgate became a gate in 1452. The gate was demolished in 1762; there are only a few remnants here and there.

The gate was next to Bethlam hospital, which moved to the west of the gate in 1685. It was the world's first psychiatric hospital, and root of the word 'bedlam'

city architecture

• Gherkin - Norman Foster
• Lloyds building - Richard Rogers

photographer beware

BBC report on over over enthusiastic police harassing photographers. I was recently stopped under anti-terrorism laws (apparently) by what must have been two very bored plain clothes policemen; questioned in 'polite' policese ... said I was behaving 'oddly'. Couldn't understand why I was taking photos of walls and bridges, no matter how much I explained colour, texture, age, history. "Yes, but why?".

Desire paths

People defining how they use their environment - design by ourselves - rather than being designed for us.

"This really needs to be paved - but it won't be. The buildings in the left background are the shops. The planners would have us walk along the path to the right and under the road through a dark tunnel.

It would be far too dangerous to allow people to cross the road here and far too expensive to install a pedestrian crossing and so folk have to walk through the mud on wet days and brave the traffic because planners think of people in cars."

GeorgieR - From desire paths flickr group

bleached hotels - Sinai

Sinai hotels at Haubitz + Zoach

Battersea doors

Battersea

Bridges

Battersea, London

The Prisoner

(Under) Hyde Park, London

concrete decay

Marylebone, London

Abstract walls

Marylebone, London

yellow light

St. Pancras station (1868) in the foreground, and Kings Cross station (1852) behind. Eerie yellow light... wet.

"This is not my home. How did I get so far from water? It must be over that way somewhere. "

boredom and banality / ersatz dereliction

"Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other."

Susan Sontag - "America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly" - On Photography - 1977

The present masquerading as past: carefully constructed, nurtured, maintained. Jaded. Smug. Disjointed from the past. Jarring - continuity destroyed in pursuit of... kitsch. Campness.

"The old-style dandy hated vulgarity. The new-style dandy, the lover of Camp, appreciates vulgarity. Where the dandy would be continually offended or bored, the connoisseur of Camp is continually amused, delighted. The dandy held a perfumed handkerchief to his nostrils and was liable to swoon; the connoisseur of Camp sniffs the stink and prides himself on his strong nerves.

It is a feat, of course. A feat goaded on, in the last analysis, by the threat of boredom. The relation between boredom and Camp taste cannot be overestimated. Camp taste is by its nature possible only in affluent societies, in societies or circles capable of experiencing the psychopathology of affluence."

Susan Sontag - Notes On "Camp" - 1964

"The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes."

rhythm

Whitechapel

cerulean doors

• Kings Cross
• Whitechapel

boundary wall

Whitechapel, demolished railway bridge

Dereliction II

Shoreditch

Nostalgia III

Amsterdam 1992

wall

Pennington Street, Whitechapel. This quarter of a mile 19th century wall hides Rupert Murdoch's News International printing plant: The London Times and The Sun. Before the arches were bricked up, ran along the London Docks North Quay and was previously occupied by drug and cotton warehouses.

green tree

Dereliction I

The sun came out today! Wandered through Whitechapel - I never realised how many poles there are in London. Everywhere.

boredom I

I'm soooo bored of hearing "Only boring people get bored" etc etc etc...

"...those who do not bore themselves usually bore others, while those who bore themselves entertain others.”

"People with experience maintain that proceeding from a basic principle is supposed to be very reasonable; I yield to them and proceed from the basic principle that all people are boring. Or is there anyone who would be boring enough to contradict me in this regard? This basic principle has to the highest degree the repelling force always required in the negative, which is actually the principle of motion. It is not merely repelling but infinitely repulsive, and whoever has the basic principle behind him must necessarily have infinite momentum for making discoveries. If, then, my thesis is true, a person needs only to ponder how corrupting boredom is for people, tempering his reflections more or less according to his desire to diminish or increase his impetus, and if he wants to press the speed of the motion to the highest point, almost with danger to the locomotive, he needs only to say to himself: Boredom is the root of all evil. It is very curious that boredom, which itself has such a calm and sedate nature, can have such a capacity to initiate motion. The effect that boredom brings about is absolutely magical, but this effect is one not of attraction but of repulsion."

"Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings. Adam was bored because he was alone; therefore Eve was created. Since that moment, boredom entered the world and grew in quantity in exact proportion to the growth of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored en famille. After that, the population of the world increased and the nations were bored en masse. To amuse themselves, they hit upon the notion of building a tower so high that it would reach the sky. This notion is just as boring as the tower was high and is a terrible demonstration of how boredom had gained the upper hand. Then they were dispersed around the world, just as people now travel abroad, but they continued to be bored. And what consequences this boredom had: humankind stood tall and fell far, first through Eve, then from the Babylonian tower."

Kierkegaard - Either/Or

blue shark

grey pigeons

I find these cropped trees a bit creepy at the best of times.