1.
THE PELLETS ARE TRANSFERRED FROM BEHIND THE ‘FACE’ OF THE MECHANISM THROUGH A GATE – TWO GATES, OR A GATE IN TWO PARTS. THE FIRST DESCENDS, THE SECOND ASCENDS, WITH A SWIVELLING ACTION.
LIKE TEETH.
AND THEY ARE WHITE, THE ONLY WHITE PLASTIC COMPONENTS IN THE FACE OF THE MECHANISM.
THE GUMS ARE A WORM-EATEN TIMBER, SOFT TO THE TOUCH. CONNOISSEURS ENJOY THE ODOUR OF THE TIMBER.
THE CHEEKS OF THE MECHANISM ARE MORE STABLE COMPONENTS. DON’T FORGET THE HYDRAULICS BY WHICH THEY OPERATE.
AND THERE IS A COMPONENT ABOVE THE GUMS DISTINGUISHED NOT BY ITS MATERIAL BUT BY ITS GRID OF HOLES, IN THIS CASE CUT THROUGH STAINLESS STEEL. THE SURFACE IS BRUSHED.
THE EYES ARE NOT LOCATABLE. THEY ARE THE INTENSIVE PRESENCE OF COLOUR – YELLOW AND RED.
2.
THE FLOODING IS VIEWED FROM THE AIR. AN EXPANSE OF WATER DIVIDED BY LINES OF HEDGES AND SOME TREES.
A WOMAN WEARING A SUMMER DRESS, IN AN OPEN-TOPPED CAR, HER BLOND HAIR SWAYING WITH THE CURRENT.
THERE ARE DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES FOR FILLING AN ICE-CUBE TRAY BUT WATER IS WASTED.
FLOODS OF TEARS.
A TINY FIGURE, A BRIGHT T-SHIRT AGAINST THE DARK CORRUGATED IRON OF THE ROOF, THE BODY’S BLURRING GESTURE AN INDEX OF THE CONDITIONS.
A BATH TOO FULL: FOREIGN THING, LIKE NEW FURNITURE.
HIS ANXIETY IS EXPRESSED IN BAD DREAMS. TOILETS MALFUNCTION. THE DOOR IS LOCKED, BUT THE WATER LEVEL IS RISING. HE WILL BE SHAMED.
AGAINST THE PAVEMENT, WATER DRAINING THROUGH AN OVERFLOW PIPE HIGH ON THE EXTERIOR WALL MAKES A SHARP SOUND.
FLOODWATERS RECEDE LEAVING RESIDUES OF SEAWEED.
MENISCUS AND SURFACE TENSION.
“WHAT STRUCTURATION OF (THE) LANGUAGE DOES NOT MAINTAIN A COMPLICITY OF LONG STANDING BETWEEN RATIONALITY AND A MECHANICS OF SOLIDS ALONE?” [Luce Irigary, ‘The “Mechanics” of Fluids, This Sex Which is Not One, 1975]
WHEN THE LEVEL DROPS, MAN-MADE RESERVOIRS REVEAL THEIR ORIGINS. THE LAND IS SICK.
BUT THE NATURAL BODY OF WATER HAS ORGANISED THE MATERS OF ITS BANKS TO REMAIN PICTURESQUE EVEN AFTER A DRY SEASON.
THE FLOOD: THE FLOOD.
CLEAR WATER SEEPS IN UNDER THE DOOR.
THE MILK OF FLOOD WATERS.
3.
[J.G. Ballard’s ‘Miracles of Life: An Autobiography’]
There was desperate fighting in the open countryside only a mile from our home. At one point artillery shells from the rival Chinese and Japanese batteries were passing over our roof, and my parents closed the house and moved with the servants to the comparative safety of a rented house in the French Concession.
Curiously, the house we moved to had a drained swimming pool in its garden. It must have been the first drained pool I had seen, and it struck me as strangely significant in a way I have never fully grasped. My parents decided not to fill the pool, and it lay in the garden like a mysterious empty presence. I would walk through the unmown grass and stare down at its canted floor. I could hear the bombing and gunfire all around Shanghai, and see the vast pall of smoke that lay over the city, but the drained pool remained apart,. In the coming years I would see a great many drained and half-drained pools, as British residents left Shanghai for Australia and Canada, or the assumed ‘safety’ of Hong Kong and Singapore, and they all seemed as mysterious as that first pool in the French Concession. I was unaware of the obvious symbolism that British power was ebbing away, because no one thought so at the time, and faith in the British Empire was at its jingoistic height. Right up to, and beyond, Perl Harbour it was taken for granted that the dispatch of a few Royal Navy warships would send the Japanese scuttling back to Tokyo Bay. I think now that the drained pool represented the unknown, a concept that had played no part in my life. Shanghai in the 1930s was full of extravagant fantasies, but these spectacles were designed to promote a new hotel or airport, a new department store, a nightclub or dog-racing track. Nothing was unknown.
