Nov 08 24
Aphids and bees are busying around inside of some large, white, conical flowers. The extreme lightness of the single petal funnels make the insect activity look very stark.
The slumpy low plants dot the sandy, relatively forgotten field, haphazardly. The few trees (maybe four) are also disorderly and spread out. They have blobby and twisted silhouettes, with leaves atypically close to the ground — likely from having to endure a few decades of near-lethal cuttings. Nevertheless these giant leafy mounds appear to be thriving.
To the left is a tall wall, on the other side of which churns an endless, booming river of cars and trucks. In this section, the highway bridges over an actual river; which runs in a deep, wide, concrete channel. The water is green with algae and strewn aimlessly with trash. The traffic is not visible.
It is an intersection with a feeling of immense power, but unattended, or not typically signified.
At first, the sound of the cars and trucks, reverberating in the massive concrete channel, is deafening (and wholly defining) but eventually, because it is so consistent, it is surprisingly easy to lose awareness of. We are inclined to say that this is because we domesticate or tame or normalize the sound — but it feels more complicated than that. Maybe it is more appropriate to say that we are surviving the sound — and don’t quite understand what is happening there.
Sometimes in this place (or in places similar) we feel like an involuntary tuning fork for an overwhelming, beautiful, slightly sinister ambiguity.
The slumpy low plants dot the sandy, relatively forgotten field, haphazardly. The few trees (maybe four) are also disorderly and spread out. They have blobby and twisted silhouettes, with leaves atypically close to the ground — likely from having to endure a few decades of near-lethal cuttings. Nevertheless these giant leafy mounds appear to be thriving.
To the left is a tall wall, on the other side of which churns an endless, booming river of cars and trucks. In this section, the highway bridges over an actual river; which runs in a deep, wide, concrete channel. The water is green with algae and strewn aimlessly with trash. The traffic is not visible.
It is an intersection with a feeling of immense power, but unattended, or not typically signified.
At first, the sound of the cars and trucks, reverberating in the massive concrete channel, is deafening (and wholly defining) but eventually, because it is so consistent, it is surprisingly easy to lose awareness of. We are inclined to say that this is because we domesticate or tame or normalize the sound — but it feels more complicated than that. Maybe it is more appropriate to say that we are surviving the sound — and don’t quite understand what is happening there.
Sometimes in this place (or in places similar) we feel like an involuntary tuning fork for an overwhelming, beautiful, slightly sinister ambiguity.