Rather than writing, David Constantine seems to perform an act of visualisation on the reader’s behalf; what he makes us see is matter-of-fact but at the same time somehow light, unmoored and thoroughly poetic. His stories are evidence. Everyone in them is a witness, sometimes to a death, more often to a birth; sometimes, to [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘landscape’
October 22, 2009
a time in spain
Underground parking structure, Urbanisation Sur, Valencia.
Architectural detail, Urbanisation Sur.
Objects, Urbanisation Sur.
Welcome to Vegas, Don Jilton 24 horas a su servicio.
Hulk, Pego
Other discarded objects, Pego.
Discarded Renault 4, Benirrama.
October 6, 2009
this is not quite the real october I imagined
It’s warm & wet. Five crows rollick down the middle of Grove Road about twenty feet up, tumbling & mock-fighting. My latest autumn spider sits under the lead in the top righthand window corner, glumly watching her web sag into strings & long hexagons in the rain, the way her mother, grandmother & great grandmother [...]
September 12, 2009
running down
September. The season can’t make up its mind. Will it clutch at summer or declare the death of history & move on ? I remembered that running always gets harder for me in September. Even at 30-odd, with the whole Peak District outside my front door (to be strict, my only door at that time), [...]
August 28, 2009
acts of enclosure
Though not much of a swimmer, I was interested in this until I saw their caps, which reminded me of this. More Acts of Enclosure in the new style, in which an activity open to any human being–going for a swim, going for a paddle, moving for pleasure in a landscape–is repackaged & generously returned [...]
August 22, 2009
gardens
I like gardens, but I suspect them too. Gardens pretend to be outside, but their secret is that they are not. A garden is a place you can’t have, a state that doesn’t exist. It’s a door that won’t open. The sightlines of gardens are designed not to deliver, designed to promise precisely what’s not–precisely [...]
August 12, 2009
creationist day out
Ken MacLeod illustrates this blog entry on creationism with a picture of some people out for a day’s coasteering & DWS-lite somewhere in Pembroke. It’s a pity the photographer has made them seem so wooden. But they’re clearly having a good time.
July 15, 2009
fear & loathing by the rochdale canal
She has so many emails from writers, the bookshop owner says, that sometimes it’s hard to get any work done at all! In those few words the Calder Valley clamps down on you as relentlessly as it did on any Victorian loom operator & you’re deformed instantly by some geographic-claustrophobic metaphor for the whole Ted [...]
July 8, 2009
fantasyland
Three green woodpeckers feeding on the ground by the woodland near the station. On a wet morning or at twilight this is a ghostly enough place as it is. For a moment one of the little paths of opportunity that crisscross the common will seem to lengthen out in front of you into deep heath [...]
July 6, 2009
barnes common
Some humidity leached out the air in the night. Barnes is cool again, under the willows by Beverley Brook & in the little narrow tracks between bramble & waist-high nettles. Then as you emerge from there you feel the London summer thicken on your skin. The heath light could pass itself off as early morning, [...]
