{"id":230,"date":"2004-05-23T12:02:08","date_gmt":"2004-05-23T12:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blah\/?p=230"},"modified":"2018-07-19T15:13:27","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T22:13:27","slug":"on_lonely_place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/2004\/05\/on_lonely_place\/","title":{"rendered":"On lonely places"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I’m on a train \u2014 one of the 225s that run between London and the north-east, or up to Edinburgh. It’s shooting along, smooth and sleek. But then, for some reason \u2014 it doesn’t matter what \u2014 the brakes engage, with their characteristic smell of burning rubber. It takes miles for the beast to stop, but finally, jerkily, it does. I turn and look out of the window. A bright late morning, suddenly quiet enough to hear the birds chirping away in their usual manic happiness. There’s a wooden fence just there, separating a wild, overgrown field from the tracks. The grass and wild-flowers reach through, so close I could reach out and touch them. And I look at one of the flowers, and realise that it’s likely no-one has ever looked at it before. Then that it’s likely no-one will ever look at it again. It took the randomness of the train’s stopping exactly here<\/em> for me to see it. It’s a strange sort of secret, a confidence that’s been given only to me.<\/p>\n

It’s a shivery feeling for me, but also oddly comforting. I love the loneliness of places no-one sees, especially if they’re somehow hidden in-between the places that they see all the time. Maybe there’s something reassuring in watching the world work perfectly well, perfectly happily, without people to observe it, to manage it. I love the detail that no-one is ever going to notice: this flower, or that blade of grass. I love that discovered moment: seeing the way the wind blows that flower right now, here at this place that no-one was supposed to see, when no-one was supposed to be here. I think part of me sometimes wants to stay there, where it’s hidden and safe, like a child’s den in the woods. It’s a womb-fixation, probably, Dr Freud.<\/p>\n

Anyway, from Boing Boing<\/a>, this fantastic collection of photographs by Yuji Saiga of Gunkanjima<\/em>, a Japanese island reclaimed from the sea as a coal-mining community, then abandoned as the coal ran out. Some introductory text here<\/a>, and then a set of galleries here<\/a>. The photographs of the last days of the community are haunting enough \u2014 people living under the shadow of so much industrial hulk \u2014 but the photographs of the abandoned island are hauntingly lonely. There’s something of Hiroshima about them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I’m on a train \u2014 one of the 225s that run between London and the north-east, or up to Edinburgh. It’s shooting along, smooth and sleek. But then, for some reason \u2014 it doesn’t matter what \u2014 the brakes engage, with their characteristic smell of burning rubber. It takes miles for the beast to … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":968,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northgare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}