The Guard

I sometimes spend time here, up atop the wide stone ramparts of the great watchtower, guarding the passes to the world outside. Those far-off mountains form an endless, broken-topped silhouette against a pale glow that ever-looms over the dread cities and foul hands of the hateful realm beyond. The malignant light creeps across the wastes before the wall, and infuses the ancient stone with a sickly yellow hue, boldly irradiating the fence designed to ward off poisonous intrusion. The glow alights the dark clouds racing overhead, yellow and monstrous under a pitch-sky, which swirl and tumble in grotesque mime, climbing over the mountains and storming over the walls. Stale, tainted winds hurtle across the plain, driving the clouds, and crashing against the stone, whirling and churning at the base of the wall and then toppling over, whistling through castellation and tower eyelets, dragging dust and sand from old mortar and passing on. Rains fall, and the wind whips the rain, and the frantic, icy splinters form dense grey sheets, speeding across the plain and pounding the keep like the tide, rising and then falling away. I shelter atop the wall, leaning under dripping eaves in shadowed doors, watching, but this is not my place, the watch is kept by others.

Standing about the walls, unmoving and unseen, tall men wrapped in darks cloaks that are blenched and dulled, clasped at the collars with white, cracked fingers. They tense, then relax as the wind mounts, then relents endlessly, clawing at limb, tearing through hair and blasting the glazed and crusted eyes of the watchers. The night will not pass, but the watch on the boarder-land will not fail, not until all else has ended and there no need to watch. I come here seldom, only when restless or under threat, and I will pass on, inspecting the guard at other places, to ensure my realm, my sanctum, is secure.

The Worm

One of the most incredible spectacles in a movie that loves spectacle, is the brief but mind-bending scene of the colossal, deep-space worm. The galaxy in which Star Wars is set is vast beyond imagining and is so successfully portrayed in the films by the extreme diversity of worlds and peoples; ranging wildly across deserts, iceland wastes or floating cities, all inhabited variously by industrious pigmy’s, tyrannical slugs or neurotic machines.

But this scene captures something else; briefly, as the narrative collects itself, we encounter the ‘wilderness.’ On the edge of civilised space, of the things known familiar within the fictional world of the film, we look out over an expanse alien to the heroes, and we become suddenly aware of a world older and greater than the setting of the film, and more unnerving still, a world unaffected and unconcerned with the events of the story. It is an odd inclusion- does it diminish the tale, or does it enrich its context? The wonder and fantasy of the ‘space opera’ is described in the epic naval conflicts, clustered shipyards and space-stations and long inter-planetary journeys, but here, a bit of strange, uncertain horror intrudes- a moment where wonder is chilled, and wide-eyes quiver. The scene with the titanic and blind worm, sunk within a lightless and silent asteroid, introduces a vague and unnerving glimpse of a dismal eternity, of appalling scale, and of a grotesque and abominable consciousness awake in the furthest corners of the galaxy. 

The worm is not part of the narrative- is seen in its horrid entirety for only a moment and is not even directly referred to. It may have been created as an uncertain and overblown ‘environmental threat,’ unbiased and unintelligent, to remind us of the wonder of the exotic setting. The sequence skilfully paces the action, giving the crew and audience time to rest and reflect while the tension builds for the next development. After the Millennium Falcon escapes the Imperial attack on the ice-planet Hoth, it attempts to evade the pursuing warships by negotiating a swarming asteroid cluster and setting down within the monumental caverns of one of the floating derelicts. When the moment is right, the threat is there to drive them out and kick the story onward; the worm is revealed, the crew are driven onward and in that moment, we are incidentally exposed to the frightening setting beyond. Even more disturbing in the surprise and dismay of the heroes, who belong to this world, and their reluctance to describe or even acknowledge what they have seen;

Han; jaw-clenched and cagey, desperately races the Falcon out of the asteroid, in stoic comprehension of the magnitude of the horror:
“This is no cave.”
Leia; wide-eyed and briefly maidenly in her terror of the descending jaws, whirls on the grim pilot:
“What?!”

What is this thing? What is it doing here? How can this be possible? In the remotest and most inhospitable place imaginable, this monster lives, but it is not a familiar monster, not a slashing insect, or a shuffling cyborg that are so commonly found within the galaxy- but a worm. A worm; the eternal symbol of decay, of coming death, destruction, and forgetfulness, the consumption of all things, slow and faceless, the attendant of graves, persistent and meticulous. The worm is here –eating- sunk within its meal- feeding blindly and insatiably and eternally, grown to ghastly size by endless gluttony. In a dark corner, buried, hidden from the light even in this lightless realm, it finds sustenance, consuming dust and ancient rock, gnawing on the galaxy's old bones, nibbling at the very fabric of space itself. 

Is this literally Poe’s Conqueror? The metaphor for not only human mortality- that these advanced people are not yet immune to, or the mortality of all things? Or space and time itself? What have the heroes stumbled upon? The slow destruction and dissolution of the galaxy begun in this dark corner? Or a manifestation of a primordial element of the universe itself- like the deep-space gods of Lovecraft- a god of decay or un-doing- patient, eternal, with a mind that count only eons, eyes that see only galaxies- quietly adrift out here, awaiting a change. 

Had the crew stopped to consider this thing- the primordial connotation of rock and worm, of the immensity of time that shifts asteroids, or the impossible patience of a creature adrift in the void- if they had contemplated the mind of such a being, how would it have affected them? Being suddenly presented with a tangible slither of the true vastness of the universe, would they have had the spirit to continue? What is one brief war between indistinct creatures in the entirety of all conflict? What is the point of saving and safeguarding mortal lives when death is assured? What is the motivation of acting at all when the knowledge of any deeds will be lost and so thoroughly forgotten that it might never have happened? What it the purpose of any happening at all when the universe itself is mortal, and so with it- time, space and the totality of existence?

Shall the Worm be the only witness at the end of existence? In the last moments- at the end of time- when its size now fills all space, and what remains- merely dust and energies- are contained within its insides, shall the Worm turn and devour itself, tail first in stupid insatiable gluttony? 


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Image credit; (images cropped as needed)
1. http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080201041921/starwars/images/8/85/Hothslug.JPG;  
2. http://spaceships.30doradus.org/main.php?g2_itemId=576
3. http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/ep5/sslug2.jpg; 
4. http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/25200000/Star-Wars-Episode-V-The-Empire-Strikes-Back-star-wars-25222428-1280-720.jpg;

Escape To - part one - The Island Hashima

There’s an island-

-small -maybe 500 meters long- located about five kilometres off the Japanese coast- fortified with grey walls and grey towers, and completely empty of people. It sits out there, a brooding fortress,  a stealthy battleship, its silhouette hovering black on the horizon, a wraith and a ruin, menacing the city of Nagasaki.

It was once the heart of a brief and frantic industry, a small city constructed out there on the sea-beaten rock, but when the industry left, its people vanished and the island, its buildings, its memories was given up to the sea. Used-up, barren and abandoned it slowly crumbles away, concrete cracks, wood rots- eroded by the endless blasting sea-wind with it salted touch, and the dark waters wait to devour all.


 ...landing.

Vast and empty it is, a silent place and a lonely place, cataclysmic in its ruin, but tranquil in its stillness. The sea-wind threads endless tendrils through the narrow streets, the walls parched and bare, taking up the disturbed dust and ashes and winging it out to sea in gentle erosion. Timbers creak and crack, stones skip and tumble, and on all sides, the low rumble of the titanic grey sea pressing upon the walls.
All around the frail towers cluster together -life-leeched and skeletal- their skin blasted away and their innards spewed out to form grisly mounds of splinter and shrapnel at their shrunken feet. Iron-grey, rust-red and charred black paints a desolate canvas with here and there splashes of green shooting upward,  strangled and subdued. Empty-eyed, and gaping-mouthed are the silent towers, horror-struck and appalled, withered and feeble.


But they stand still.

A journey alone through the ruin -shaking steps on sliding footing- clambering and clamourous, an island to discover, a history to witness, a place lost and forgotten, unoccupied and unclaimed...

The stillness is unwilling to break, the silence returns wholly and immediately at any pause, the fervent unyielding quiet restored, as reverential as a graveyard, a weight pressing upon the spirit.

But more than this, more than the blasted landscape, the unconquerable quiet, is the slow awareness of the time that is trapped here. A bustling metropolis was here once, people living out complex and interconnected lives, families, friends, a concentration of activity, toil and struggle, love and hope- all vanished, all dispersed. Only the ghosts remain; crumbling homes with rotted furnishing, the abandoned classrooms with mouldering books, and everywhere, overturned chairs, open drawers... dropped toys.

In the silence, the numbing vastness of the life that was once here is seen, both at immediately present, and infinitely distance. Time itself is made manifest here in this vision of the past, the passing of the ages revealed in the depth of dust and decay and the frailty of wood and concrete, the remnants of a time lost since past, and unable to fade.

But peace can be found here. The anxiety that is felt is from a fear of the very large. Of scale. A fear of vast buildings reaching up to the sky, of the great black sea outside, the enormous wet sky overhead and of course, of time.

One just needs to find shelter from this scale; to carve out a little piece of space to own, to control, and thereby reinstating control. If that could be achieved, this place would become a sanctuary, a refuge, and a retreat from the broad and bustling cities over on the coast, a place to come -swiftly and discreetly- to rest, centre oneself, and to contemplate, while the world outside continues to spiral.

This cannot be a transformation of the island. The island is too great to be changed easily, and if this was achieved, it would just become an extension of the city, and outpost, a resort, and suddenly, disappointingly accessible, locatable and enterable- a destination for all but a refuge for none. As it exists now, it is a borderland, residing outside the living world, but not yet incorporeal, this realm is not desirable for the many, it could not comfort the many, but it could house a few, or a single person. If that person embraced the silence; saw vacancy as peace, and desolation as cloak to the world.

One need only a shelter from the elements and from scale. To keep the rain off, the sun in check, as well as keeping out the infinity, the anonymity and vacuousness.


There is just a need for shelter....

A small place, a human place, with doors to close, but not to be trapped, with windows to look out from, but not to be watched. A canopy from the towering heights and a wall to the silent expanse. Not just space, but place; intimate, personal, a place all your own, that is within your own control and design where you might create identity within anonymity, a place in placelessness, a shelter in the desolation. It is a manifestation of self, of spirit made physical which can only exist in realm such as this that already exists partly outside the mundane world, that known and familiar place. 

Locate it anywhere, the quality of place within the void could be orchestrated in any location, it needs only the definition of space within the desolation;  an island within an island. The value in this site is its very inhospitality, which demands the creation of place and which will continually counterpoint it, making the occupant dependent to the shelter, intimate with the shelter, as you would a life-raft after days at sea or a mountain cabin after being lost in the snow.
This is a retreat, a refuge from the world that can only exist here. Here in this realm a person can reaffirm self, desire and purpose. It is a break from the world, a private resort, on an abandoned island, avoided like a graveyard, ringed by walls, surrounded by the sea.


This is sanctuary...


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Photo credit (without additions); Jordy Meow, a French-born photographer, adventurer and urban explorer living in Japan who has published his extensive experience within Gunkanjima amongst other projects on his website, which has been the source of the excellent, moody and emotional photography that has helped tell this story within the project.

Found here;
http://www.haikyo.org
http://www.totorotimes.com

Neglect

The struggle becomes too great. The constant toiling strain to keep above the rising, rushing tide of a life’s cares, concerns and petty things. Gasping jaws, flailing arms -rocked and buffeted- dragged under- clamouring above- keeping at bay the sucking, pulling darkness all around, fighting for the brilliant light and sweet breath. But ever present is that cold; the creeping fatigue, the suffocating hopelessness, the drain of mind and will and the slow erosion of self.

Companions fail, each according to their own private undoing and the union of mind is undone. Your teacher, Reason- noble and erect in the sunlight, stutters and trembles in the dark. Your lover, Passion- bold and impetuous in the charge, soon tires and recants his extravagant vows. Your mistress Truth, haughty and beautiful in form, is impossible to appease and is hated and abused.

But it is not a malign and cunning thing that conquers, not cold rationale, or bitter realisation, it is just the worm. The decay, the rot, the slow cancer of the mind; without face or presentation, a power blind and dumb and without motive or strategy, but ancient, dreadfully powerful, and eternal. The worm conquerors, he is the master of death; and the silence, the peace, the unknowing of final death is present in life; it is lethargy, hopelessness and despair, and they foreshadow that death. The worm conquers; but brief, uncertain life can be won -beaten, strangled and eventually recalled- this small happy thing can exist for time, so long as a will is there to safeguard it.

Escaping death

Death is at once the most terrible and most natural thing in the world. Although we can take measures to avoid mortal trauma or lethal violence, we cannot escape biological mortality, and we will one day succumb to frailty, decay and death. We dread it, loath it, resent it, but we also accept it as a reality in a way that we don’t accept a violent death, an accident or a fatal illness. It is seen as a part of the natural order, but I have never understood how death can be reconciled with our treatment of life.

We live in society that values and encourages personal growth and betterment. We are conditioned to live for our future, to plan, to prepare, to act in a way that will best help our future selves. When we are young, we are readied in schools for the lives we will live, we are apprenticed and interned and our careers begin, where we encounter phrases like ‘the career ladder’ and ‘opportunities for growth’ and ‘long term goals.’ But all the while, we quietly accept that this future will inevitably come to an end and no amount of development or goal-fulfilment will prevent this. This seems like an impossible contradiction to me; how can we possibly invest in something we know will fail? Or how can we still accept death once we have become so invested in life?

It seems to me that biological mortality is an aspect of our animal heritage. Biology guarantees us just enough time to procreate, raise and protect our successors and then reclaims its gift of life. But modern man wants more than this. As intelligent, self-aware and creative animals, we now have pursuits and labours to occupy multiple lifetimes, maybe hundreds, but we are forced to specialise, to learn a certain skill, develop a particular hobby as we have no chance to do it all. But the concern of biology is only the survival of the species, which does not require immortal individuals. If we produce sufficient offspring to replace us, and they do likewise and through all generations, the species endures and so in a way, we are already immortality, at the species-level.

This is, however, little consolation to those who form the many tiny hands that perpetuate the species along its grand journey, and yet see only a slim fraction of it. Think of all the great minds and far-thinkers that never saw the results of their work and or the futures they predicted. Yet still think of the things that we will not see. Whether the first lunar colonies, or Martian? Or the discovery of the twin to our own planet to which we dispatch the noble pioneers on long cryogenic voyages never to return. Or artificial life? Thinking machines or the recreation of lost species in real-life Jurassic Park’s within vast designer ecosystems

Aubrey de Grey is an author and theoretician in the field of gerontology and a leading proponent of extended human life. As chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation (Strategies for Negligible Senescence) his work seeks to develop a range of regenerative medical therapies to periodically repair age-related damage to postpone the correlated diseases in humans. [i] He describes aging simply as a disease rather than cosmic law or “the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us.” [ii]

De Grey believes that the first people who could live to be 1000 are already alive today, and could even be as old as 40 or 50 already. [iii] It is important to clarify that the SENS strategies do not refer to a single ‘immortality’ treatment, but rather the on-going bodily rejuvenation provided by constantly improving medical treatments. The 1000 year figure is cumulative, so as long as you live to see the first generation of these treatments, predicted to be as little as 20-25 years away, you will gain enough time to see the next medical breakthrough, further postponing senescence. In a TED talk in 2005 de Grey describes this as ‘Longevity Escape Velocity,’ as although individuals aged 80+ today may have too much age-related damage already to be helped by the first generation of treatments, those aged 40-50 may be pulled out of “the dive” and regain lost youth. [iv] It is important to point out that SENS is describing the postponement of aging, not the prolonging of aging as is often assumed, or the ‘Tithonus error’ de Grey calls it, recalling Eos’ torturous gift of immortality that neglected to prevent the Trojan’s aging. Indeed de Grey believes that the science far ahead of the funding as the work struggles against a general social “pro-aging trance;” described as a psychological strategy people employ to deal with the inevitability of death which explains society’s general ambivalence with death. [v]

Biological immortality, however, isn’t inherently impossible, in fact the term ‘negligible senescence’ was in use in the 1990’s, long before the SENS Foundation, to describe living organisms like lobsters and Hydras who were found to show no signs of aging. This is a subject that is seemingly still debated, but the work of Daniel Martinez in 1998 on the ‘Biological Immortality of Hydra’ is generally considered to be evidence of non-senescing organisms generally. [vi]

If the living world permits immortality in other organisms, why should humans be so accepting of death? How could the pursuit of deathlessness possibly be ‘unnatural,’ when modern medicine is already doing this by preventing disease, injury and organ-failure? It seems we need to change our perception of aging altogether. If we treat aging as Aubrey de Grey does, as just a disease, why should we not seek to cure it?


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[i] SENS Research Foundation, “A Reimagined Research Strategy for Aging | SENS Research Foundation,” accessed May 4, 2013, http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research.
[ii] Aubrey de Grey, “Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality | LiveScience,” accessed May 4, 2013, http://www.livescience.com/6967-hang-25-year-wait-immortality.html.
[iii] Aubrey de Grey, “Aubrey De Grey: A Roadmap to End Aging | Video on TED.com,” July 2005, http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Aubrey de Grey, “Combating the Tithonus Error: What Works?,” Rejuvenation Research 11 (August 2008): 713–715.
[vi] D. E. Martinez, “Mortality Patterns Suggest Lack of Senescence in Hydra,” Experimental Gerontology 33 (May 1998): 217–225.

The Home - A manifesto

Some time ago, I submitted for a class a ‘manifesto’ for the architectural pursuit of the Home. It’s brief- but compiles 3 points that frame my own idea of what a home should be.

The Home
We spend increasingly more time on display. Modern transport and communication have allowed us to be closer, more often and for longer- and always, we are in the public view. The home is our escape from this, indeed our only refuge, but even this most sacred object we are increasingly treating as just another showcase, a badge and status symbol. The houses we build or buy and furnish are primarily intended to be seen- a demonstration of our success or a statement of our personality.

I declare we return the house to what it should be; a home. A home that is not for your neighbour’s envy, your guest’s intimidation or your girlfriend’s arousal, but for you alone.
The purpose of the home is solace and comfort- this is your keep, your last bastion, your refuge and shelter from this fast-spinning and ever-shifting world. Leave the nameless and faceless at the door, here, you alone define the space and judge your actions. Here- if nowhere else- you are the main character.  

Introspection – The Courtyard 
Traditionally the house looks outward- as much for sunlight as it is for keeping the neighbours in sight, and so conversely, invites looks inwards. You are again on display, but here you are seen at your most vulnerable. We must reverse this aspect- turn your views in upon yourself as the focus of the home- upon those things that define you, your activities, your belongings, your loved ones that you have invited inside. The house is concerned with you; it is not simply a platform from which to watch the outside world.
If we collapse the ‘convex’ perspective, and pull space from the outside to the inside, we can enclose it within the house and create an intimately defined, ‘concave’ space for ourselves. This is the courtyard which is too scarcely borrowed in the west, but serves masterfully as the private and enclosed heart of your home.  

Shelter – The Cave 
The home must provide security and protection from the world that is beyond your control. To replicate this, take heed of the primal responses of man- his instinctive gravitation to solidity and strength- look to the cave. Construction should express in concrete and stone the same characteristics of the earth itself. Lower the building, let its horizontal aspect reflect the ground plain not defy it- lower the floors further throughout the depth of the building. The heart of the building should be its lowest point, protected on all sides by the internal faces of the house and open to the sky (though overhung by the house) and completely protected from the exterior ground plane. This space is secured and secluded- nestled snugly into the earth. 

Truth – The Machine 
At all times the house serves man and this function should be celebrated. It facilities cannot be reduced by adherence to an ill-fitting aesthetic- rather its own aesthetic must be incorporated into the whole. The house is a machine and the truth of this is its beauty. Also- as a servant- it must be well equipped- so look to new technology to improve it- incorporation does not mean hide- express the hard and cool mechanical elements and you will express the defining nature of the building itself. Always allow for the future- technology will change- but the function of the building will not and it will need modification- it is truly a machine, one that must be readily upgraded.

The Sea Mine

One of the earliest and most terrifying images I can remember from my childhood is of an old, derelict sea mine. I was young- watching some old television drama with my parents- I don’t remember what, or even the plot- when suddenly I was seeing the menacing outline of a lost sea mine bobbing and tumbling in a stormy grey sea, having apparently emerged at some time from the dark waters below. This image filled me with dread, or maybe that came later as I dwelt on it, but it comes back to me now, and brings with it the same old horror.

It was a menacing, cunningly-submerged, iron ball bristling with trigger-pins like spikes above and below- clearly very old, rust-red and pitted-black on a steely-grey sea. It was this 'submersion' that horrified me, revealed in the gradient of its colour; bright at the top where it peeked above the waves, but darkening toward its hidden underside in the black water, where it would be trailing it’s broken, rusted tether. It wasn’t the evil nature of the device that frightened me- of explosion and sudden death- though this vague connotation may have hovered near to my immature mind- it was of the unknown, and the combination of menaces. I was overwhelmed by the sudden awareness of antiquity, the mystery and alienism of an unknown artefact- frighteningly anachronistic- its maker and purpose long forgotten, and its seemingly dumb and directionless existence. Then of course, there was the sea. I am not afraid of the water, but the idea of things existing below its surface- unseen or obscured, like a submerged tree limbs or jagged rocks unnerves me.

The sea- cold and timeless, indifferent to man but amused to harbour his destructive devices, adding its own old cunning to their potency, alongside smashing waves and suffocating depths.


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Photo credit; Wikipedia, Accessed March 9, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mine_%28AWM_304925%29.jpg