Fixing

[vaneramos]

August 18: Morning on Cavendish Beach, Prince Edward Island


When the door opened, the place inside held only ancient machinery jangling mysteriously, wanting maintenance: room after room filled with dissonance. I came from a family of engineers (my father wanted to design airplanes), but none of us were good with the architecture of inner spaces. Not knowing where to lubricate or what to tighten, the men would turn from drum kettle boiler rooms of emotion, pretending everything worked fine, not wanting to face rust and misalignment until finally gears started firing pyrotechnics. Then someone would stand in the smouldering clamour shouting words, as if men could reason with the deaf apparatus of relationships. Nothing ever got fixed, and each new gizmo was based on the faulty configuration of the last, laced with failures of memory. I, not even an engineer, never carried correct tools into the bowels of any groaning factory, always a spanner. First would appear blueprints, eyes passing messages across the dark, heartbeats in careful detail if I listened closely. I craved to press my hand against smooth steel of a strong machine and feel its harmonious rhythm. But engineers always try to fix things, and the true way of life is to build ourselves from within.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

the photograph is beautiful, and i like the text very much.

>I craved to press my hand against smooth steel of a strong machine and feel its harmonious rhythm.

mmm! what a gorgeous image.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I see a remarkable ethereal quality of light in this photo, along with the one taken at Peggy's Cove lighthouse in Nova Scotia:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/vaneramos/378995.html

Perhaps it is particular to the Atlantic Coast. The way the human figures stand out, small but in sharp contrast to the light, reminds of a certain surrealist painter; I can't put my finger on who.

The written part of this post is experimental, arising from some of the poetry that ran through my head while we were driving. But I started writing about trees, and somehow it came out machinery instead. Writing is mysterious.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

yes, i see what you mean about that light. it really is painterly, in both photos. my father grew up in massachusetts, so i had occasion to visit the new england coast several times in childhood. i loved it, much more than the pacific beaches i saw near L.A. when i visited there once in my late teens. that rocky wildness!

"Writing is mysterious." oh, that it is.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

do you know the idea "wabi-sabi" ? it's a differnt way of looking at decay.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

No. I just looked it up on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

Fascinating.