VI from Espoo

[J. Lehmus]

VI

Between the hospital and the parking area there is trees. Actually it is a
little woods. Mostly pine, spruce, deciduous trees. An evening in late
summer. The sun is already low. The sunlight glares from the surface of a
directions sign. The sign is located after the parking area. First aid to
the left, main entrance to the right. There are three lamps affixed to the
top of the sign. A woman is walking down the pedestrian passage from the
main entrance. She is wearing a jogging outfit. A wide-brimmed hat
conceals her face. The hospital has been built on a hill. On the side of
the hill. The parking area lies at the foot of the hill. The construction
work of the facilities for parking has almost been finished on the hill's
other side. On the lawn there is a landing ground for helicopters. A
weathervane on top of a pole and some kind of an abstract metal sculpture
that is hard to comprehend. The entrance to the delivery ward is on the
left hand. Taxi drivers never wait in front of the hospital. Their grounds
is farther away. It is even more quiet there. This approximately is where
the river branches. I have checked it from a map. The river in reality is
just a broad stream. The water is always brown because the bed of the
stream is rather shallow. The other branch of the stream disappears
somewhere. The ornithologist people most certainly know about the place,
what it is like. Usually the people who step down from the bus here are
going to elsewhere. They just stood at the stop, waiting for some other
bus to arrive. Maybe a few of them were going to take some tests. One
couldn't tell. Rarely anyone spoke anyway. There was fairly good
visibility into both directions from the bus stop. The women were of many
ages. Some of them are still girls. The land use plan for the area is
unclear. There is a lot of landscaped field, very picturesque, most of it
cultivated at least to some degree. A portion of the field has been built
over just recently, for the most part yet uninhabited two-storey homes on
wet clay soil. There was some other stream over which some boards were
placed to facilitate a passage over.



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[mpalmer]

Photos from the Minutemen vs. anti-Minutemen rallies in Castro
Valley, CA, 12-2PM Saturday, April 21, 2007.

86 photos presented chronologically in slideshow format:

http://mwp.jaycloidt.com/MPMOV2006/20070421CVMm.mov
(7MB)

mwp

[J. Lehmus]

re-send

---


II

A miserable path runs along the south side of the railway. Even in the
wintertime, someone has passed here. The snow isn't very deep. It barely
covers the soil. On the railway embankment, willow bushes and dry stalks
of some last summer's plants are seen. There has been an attempt to cut
down some of the willow bushes quite recently. It is difficult to walk on
the embankment except along the path. By the side of the path stands a
metal cabinet, of the type that is commonly encountered near railways.
There has been some spray painting on the surface of the cabinet, but most
of the paint has been cleaned away. The lower part of the cabinet is
covered by aluminum plate. A few sprayed letters can still be found on the
aluminum. Beneath the plate some black electric cables appear in confused
wreaths and continue to hidden destinations under the ground. Shortly
behind the cabinet, the name of the halt can be seen on a modest signpost.
The name is beautiful.

Once a helicopter had landed near this place. It was landing. He looked as
the helicopter descended lower and lower. It had been summer, June or
beginning of July. Dry. The sound of the helicopter landing. The sound
enters even inside the apartments. It is almost similar sound to a
spinning washing machine. Somebody has engineered the washing machine to
spin-dry the laundry just like that. The beginning of the spinning phase
of the wash programme is a signal that differentiates from the background
noise of the other domestic sounds. We become conscious of the existence
of the washing machine. Maybe it is night. Somewehre a washing machine is
spinning and you hear the sound in your sleep. The water is flowing out.
This is an everyday sound we have been subjected to already in prenatal
age. Looking at a watch I can tell that the duration of the spin-dry phase
is four or five minutes. After those minutes the wash programme will
continue more quietly.

For some reason I connected the piano teacher to this place, the empty
field and the railway halt beside the field, the halt actually being just
a name on a blue sign beside the tracks. The news item in the paper told
about some other trackside elsewhere, a location that I had never even
seen. It had been cold when I met the piano teacher. Spring, maybe just
before the First of May. The man was shabby. He was carrying a doll inside
a transparent plastic box. The landing helicopter is not connected with
this. It happened later, on a sunny afternoon.


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[John M. Bennett]

This is wonderful -
john

Post by J. Lehmus
re-send
---
II
A miserable path runs along the south side of the railway. Even in
the wintertime, someone has passed here. The snow isn't very deep.
It barely covers the soil. On the railway embankment, willow bushes
and dry stalks of some last summer's plants are seen. There has been
an attempt to cut down some of the willow bushes quite recently. It
is difficult to walk on the embankment except along the path. By the
side of the path stands a metal cabinet, of the type that is
commonly encountered near railways. There has been some spray
painting on the surface of the cabinet, but most of the paint has
been cleaned away. The lower part of the cabinet is covered by
aluminum plate. A few sprayed letters can still be found on the
aluminum. Beneath the plate some black electric cables appear in
confused wreaths and continue to hidden destinations under the
ground. Shortly behind the cabinet, the name of the halt can be seen
on a modest signpost. The name is beautiful.
Once a helicopter had landed near this place. It was landing. He
looked as the helicopter descended lower and lower. It had been
summer, June or beginning of July. Dry. The sound of the helicopter
landing. The sound enters even inside the apartments. It is almost
similar sound to a spinning washing machine. Somebody has engineered
the washing machine to spin-dry the laundry just like that. The
beginning of the spinning phase of the wash programme is a signal
that differentiates from the background noise of the other domestic
sounds. We become conscious of the existence of the washing machine.
Maybe it is night. Somewehre a washing machine is spinning and you
hear the sound in your sleep. The water is flowing out. This is an
everyday sound we have been subjected to already in prenatal age.
Looking at a watch I can tell that the duration of the spin-dry
phase is four or five minutes. After those minutes the wash
programme will continue more quietly.
For some reason I connected the piano teacher to this place, the
empty field and the railway halt beside the field, the halt actually
being just a name on a blue sign beside the tracks. The news item in
the paper told about some other trackside elsewhere, a location that
I had never even seen. It had been cold when I met the piano
teacher. Spring, maybe just before the First of May. The man was
shabby. He was carrying a doll inside a transparent plastic box. The
landing helicopter is not connected with this. It happened later, on
a sunny afternoon.
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__________________________________________
Dr. John M. Bennett
Curator, Avant Writing Collection
Rare Books & Manuscripts Library
The Ohio State University Libraries
1858 Neil Av Mall
Columbus, OH 43210 USA

[phone]
***@osu.edu
www.johnmbennett.net
http://www.library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/avantwriting/
___________________________________________

[J. Lehmus]

there is some problem with the translation, the sentences are growing
much longer and more ornate than the original --

Thought that I found the right way to kick it for a clear bell sound,
after reading so much Duras, but now it seems that the environs is the
cut-up fodder park again (must be the language)

---


III

'I Will Survive.' One frequently hears this song on the buses, many
stations do play it. Very often it is in the morning. The time of the year
doesn't count that much. The light inside the bus is almost invariably
similar, from low, bright white, filtered through the dirty windows. The
sweat absorbed into the cushions of the seats mixes with the dull smell
emanating from the radiators. The buses will turn to left around here. But
that place can not be seen clearly from here, it lies a little further
away in the direction that you came from. On this side of the street, a
man dressed in dark clothes is waiting for the traffic light of the
pedestrian crossing to change. Cars are moving in and out at the entrance
to the parking hall of the shopping mall. The building is so tall that its
uniformly grey wall could be mistaked for the sky itself. Before the
entrance to the parking hall, there is a vacant lot on each side of the
access road, each one bordered by coloured fences made of plywood. The
original plan was to construct some kind of an office complex, after that
a number of cinema theaters. Possibly those buildings do exist already,
simultaneously and silently, in some other dimension. This probably is how
people usually do think about it. For a long time, a tall advertisement
was standing on the site, informing about the construction project, but
now it has been removed.

The headlights and the general design of the fore portion of a car give a
personal character to the vehicle. We can observe a silver-sided shark
slowly passing us, with it's elaborately worked slanted eyes and gaping
mouth. Of course the driver of this car experiences the environment from
within the car, from this interior. His location is inside the car and his
experience is felt in a sitting position. The car surrounds him on all
sides. It is pleasant to be inside the car, comparably quiet. It is
possible to select the desired station on the radio, whenever one wishes
to receive entertainment or information. It is mandatory to stop before a
pedestrian crossing, the light is now red. The sign informs to turn left
in order to enter the parking hall of the mall. After the crossing, one
must descend downhill just slightly. Under the ground. Now, over the
gateway, a luminous numerical display indicates the number of currently
available parking places.

There is no snow on the driveway. On the sidewalks, some snow is
encountered, but fine gritting has been sprinkled on the snow. The
gritting darkens the sideways so that they look dirty when compared to the
white areas near the edges of the sideways. Close to the pedestrian
crossing, there is a little larger heap of snow.



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