EARTH TURN
There are no sunrises
no sunsets
Just incalescent earth turns
and planetary pirouettes.
There are no sunrises
no sunsets
Just incalescent earth turns
and planetary pirouettes.
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The city of Glasgow is stained and steeped in the free flowing hills that surround it. With these hills goes Glasgow's sense of relations, near and remote, the connection to an influential source. The significance, the value of Glasgow, is all in this exotopic halo that surrounds and escorts it.
Even at the city’s nadir, it is still ‘evident’ that Glasgow lies in a depression. I am hesitant with ‘evident’ for it requires a real particpation to register this subtle undulating topography. There are, all throughout Glasgow’s hilly centre (most notably its north-western part from Pitt Street through to Buchanan Street, that part of the city that I call San Fran Glasgow), gaps through the city’s Hippodamic grid that bestow this wavy outline from a distance, and convey to the viewer the hollow that Glasgow’s centre ekes itself out of.
For the most part however, the average city-goer is involved in the immediacy of his environment. A large part of our capacity for tele-vision is prised from us. But it is still possible to see those snowy hills in the far distance, away in the background.
When this background is finally noticed (evidenced), and pulled forward, thus integrating it into Glasgow’s cityscape, one realises that Glasgow is as much its hills (and the various wild inhabitants therein) as it is her buildings, her rivers or indeed her people.
Remember, if you want to really get into the picture just click on it and it'll expand to a more 'exploratory' size.
all alone acropolitan
being on the back road
in the sky above beyond
A Short Foray into Glasgow's Hilly Perimeter
The city of Glasgow is stained and steeped in the free flowing hills that surround it. With these hills goes Glasgow's sense of relations, near and remote, the connection to an influential source. The significance, the value of Glasgow, is all in this exotopic halo that surrounds and escorts it.
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2009
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March
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- DERIVING FROM the Gaelic glas chu meaning ‘blue-gr...
- CLOUDS OVER GLASGOWThen, what do you love, you ext...
- THE START OF AN ATLASAuchinedena high land Edena S...
- AN ELEGY TO COMPLEXITYLooking north to the Dome of...
- CAR PARKS IN THE SKYHere, we're looking east-south...
- HILL STUDYDumgoyne, for anyone who has ever lived ...
- EARTH TURNThere are no sunrisesno sunsetsJust inca...
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March
(7)
evidence for a city
Even at the city’s nadir, it is still ‘evident’ that Glasgow lies in a depression. I am hesitant with ‘evident’ for it requires a real particpation to register this subtle undulating topography. There are, all throughout Glasgow’s hilly centre (most notably its north-western part from Pitt Street through to Buchanan Street, that part of the city that I call San Fran Glasgow), gaps through the city’s Hippodamic grid that bestow this wavy outline from a distance, and convey to the viewer the hollow that Glasgow’s centre ekes itself out of.
For the most part however, the average city-goer is involved in the immediacy of his environment. A large part of our capacity for tele-vision is prised from us. But it is still possible to see those snowy hills in the far distance, away in the background.
When this background is finally noticed (evidenced), and pulled forward, thus integrating it into Glasgow’s cityscape, one realises that Glasgow is as much its hills (and the various wild inhabitants therein) as it is her buildings, her rivers or indeed her people.
Remember, if you want to really get into the picture just click on it and it'll expand to a more 'exploratory' size.
Examining the contours of this world not as an immaterial mind but as a sentient body, I come to recognize my thorough inclusion within this world in a far more profound manner than our current language allows.
David Abram [Merleau Ponty & The Voice of the Earth]
David Abram [Merleau Ponty & The Voice of the Earth]
all alone acropolitan
being on the back road
in the sky above beyond
MY DISTILLERY
up there
far beyond the chaotic city
lies my distillery
and a few barrels
of a 35yr old single malt
PASSING HM LOWMOSS
Christ, look at the hills… I can almost touch them. Steve McQueen from ‘Tom Horn’
Freedom
has never felt so adored, and bars
never so abhorred.
THE TOWPATH OF EMPTINESS
Today,
this May Monday morning,
I found the path of emptiness
- the Sunyavada -
cycling along the towpath
aside the Forth and Clyde canal
to Kirkintilloch
up there
far beyond the chaotic city
lies my distillery
and a few barrels
of a 35yr old single malt
PASSING HM LOWMOSS
Christ, look at the hills… I can almost touch them. Steve McQueen from ‘Tom Horn’
Freedom
has never felt so adored, and bars
never so abhorred.
THE TOWPATH OF EMPTINESS
Today,
this May Monday morning,
I found the path of emptiness
- the Sunyavada -
cycling along the towpath
aside the Forth and Clyde canal
to Kirkintilloch
A NATURAL NEWS
The best way for the estranged
and the alienated
is to work outside the compass
to get away from all the agitation
all the pollution
the mismatched magnetics
and to enter the mountain region
directionless in its endlessness
where there is no north, no south, no east, no west -
no centre -
There is a fresh news here
of a more natural sort
the sort that Ezra propounded
a news which lasts all life
and not just all day -
refreshing, invigorating, rejuvenating news
where north, east, west and south
are marked instead
with bird, rock, tree and cloud
showing
a sort of natural north
of wind and wing
earth and air
and the surging upthrust of elements
an agitation of an altogether different sort.
FEBRUARY 28 - MARCH 2
Three transparent waydays
(where days become part of the way)
cycling the psycho-path
the flow of being
across round grey stones
The best way for the estranged
and the alienated
is to work outside the compass
to get away from all the agitation
all the pollution
the mismatched magnetics
and to enter the mountain region
directionless in its endlessness
where there is no north, no south, no east, no west -
no centre -
There is a fresh news here
of a more natural sort
the sort that Ezra propounded
a news which lasts all life
and not just all day -
refreshing, invigorating, rejuvenating news
where north, east, west and south
are marked instead
with bird, rock, tree and cloud
showing
a sort of natural north
of wind and wing
earth and air
and the surging upthrust of elements
an agitation of an altogether different sort.
FEBRUARY 28 - MARCH 2
Three transparent waydays
(where days become part of the way)
cycling the psycho-path
the flow of being
across round grey stones
LOCHS & BOULDERS
Most people can get along
with the noise of dogs and children.
Everybody cheerful in these moneyed times.
But I - why are my tastes so odd?
I love the company of lochs and boulders.
Most people can get along
with the noise of dogs and children.
Everybody cheerful in these moneyed times.
But I - why are my tastes so odd?
I love the company of lochs and boulders.
The quality of a hill is not measured by its height but by its view, and gift of the void (the absence of blockages) which it holds from its top. Hills needn’t be ‘high’ to offer a panorama of the surrounding landscape. Indeed, depending on the topography of the outlying land a hill need only be a few feet from the ground to enable an alternative sighting of the environment.
Sitting one windy and sunny afternoon at the summit of Kelvingrove Park looking across to the silhouetted outline of the southern Renfrewshire hills you get to realise and re-cognise (whether its these or the Campsies and Kilpatricks to the north and west) that Glasgow (at least its epicentre and source from where it has moved outward) is indeed in the earth and not, like the unfortunate predicament of Warsaw and other 'flat cities', simply on it. It is this immersion in the territory and the weather (and by extension our own implicate immersion in a breathing Body much larger than our own) that lends Glasgow her distinctive appeal, much like a whisky through fermentation in an aged oak barrel acquires its inimitable taste.
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