Tag: Forth Rail Bridge

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Encounters Found Art Happenstance Language of Objects Observation Poetry rag-pickings Signs and Signifiers

Transitory Islands

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Foregrounded over the Forth

An archipelago of transitory islands

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A solitary tree, inhabits the island

 

 

Island of the hidden lagoon

 

 

(Love) Island of the heart

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The ‘Transitory Islands’ pic was a fairly random phone shot from crossing the Forth Rail Bridge by train – a journey undertaken many times. Perhaps this chance encounter pulled something, initially unseen, out of these raindrops:
Serendipitous encounter No. 1: (On twitter @gawanmac asked: “it just me, or is that archipelago humpback-shaped?” A delicious coincidence as a number of humpback whales had been seen in the River Forth that very week). Is that also a gull masquerading as an eye?
Serendipitous encounter No. 2: playing Julian Priester’s Love, Love and drawn to the cover which I hadn’t really looked at closely before. A view reminiscent of the outlook, crossing the Forth Rail Bridge by train, where the gulls are often seen flying below you.  Some disturbance in the water, have we just missed a humpback whale breaching?

Now playing: Julian Priester Pepo Mtoto – Love, Love

Categories
Happenstance Observation Poetry Psychogeography rag-pickings

As For the Sea

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As for the sea. The sea is impossible to believe. Only by imagining it can you manage to see its reality

Clarice Lispector

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With one step, a stream is crossed

an eye on the upland hill.

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Nomadic waters falling

gathering, descending,

dreaming of the open sea.

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Imagine:

The sea as a source of comfort

The sea as a site of desire

The sea as a skin of violence

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We can imagine into being

red diamonds. Criss-crossing

but never containing

the sea

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Imagine if the sea was all we had

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As if crawling on surface tension

a skeletal remnant, ghost

of the Great War.

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Now, a living sanctuary – seabirds

come, seabirds go.

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Imagine a sea-skating insect – hatched

from a Miyazaki film.

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Imagine the sea rising to bleed into the sky.

What about us?

Where will we stand

When the ink smudged clouds

Fall into the sea?

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Flotsam & jetsam

Plastic shards

and dead wood.

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Between high tide

and low tide

A little more

short of breath.

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Photographs taken from Carlingnose Point, North Queensferry, Limekilns and Crombie on the Fife Coast.

Now playing: Sandy Denny/Fotheringay – The Sea

Categories
Encounters Found Art Observation Poetry rag-pickings

View from the Bridge

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View from the bridge

Always different,

always the same

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Now playing: Ralph Towner – Blue Sun

Categories
Encounters Happenstance

An Almost Supernatural Manifestation…

I must have taken this journey hundreds of times. The railway crossing over the Firth of Forth, rumbling through the three red diamonds of the Rail Bridge.

The train window frames a changing canvas of sea and sky as weather formations dance in constant flux. Bright, clear days offer sunlight stained, glassy blues which stretch to the horizon, punctuated by the islands of Inchcolm, Inchmickery and Inchkeith. The abandoned World War II fortifications of Inchgarvie, lie directly underneath the bridge. Hollowed out shells, windows like mouths of gaping teeth, now colonised by seabirds. The gulls ascend to hover on the updraughts, peering into the train window, before coasting off and plummeting seaward – racing gravity.  On certain days, a tang of salt air permeates the hermetically sealed train carriage.

There is an excitement in looking out and observing the great diagonal smears of rain advancing up the estuary. Slabs of smudged grey – coming this way. Tumultuous skies billowing with angry clouds blown in by sea winds. The theatre of watching the weather arrive.

However, I have never experienced conditions such as observed this week. (Thursday 26th July c. 2.30 pm). A spectacular form of haar (coastal sea fog) appeared to manifest from nowhere on an otherwise relatively ‘sunny day’. Not so much the haar rolling in but an almost supernatural manifestation.

Thursday 25th August 2013

From the railway bridge over the Forth

a blue-tinged wash of elemental greys.

Sea and sky bleed

into a Rothko memory

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Taken just a few moments later, you can see some of the river tugs off to the right. The oil terminal at Hound Point is just emerging from the glaur, as the blue starts to break through again.

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I posted the above photographs on twitter and a couple of days later Bob Reid sent me this one. Same place, different time.

The Forth: always different, always the same.

opr1-Bob Reid
(c) Bob Reid with thanks

Now playing: James Yorkston – When the Haar Rolls In.