After the Monday in the capital and the Tuesday
on the road, I was so tired when I got home, I don't remember most of anything
of Tuesday evening. This must be what black-outs feel like. I could swear I
turned down a marriage proposal from a local poet revolutionary drunk in a
small town that I stopped to have a coffee break, but I just can't recall the
details. There were probably a lot of things going on yesterday, also, and I
can hardly remember any of those. A part of me runs great on autopilot, it
seems. I’ve gotten a lot of work done and this morning there are several emails
with thanks and jobs done. Also an empty ice-cream cup in the trash. I ate
ice-cream? How? When? Which one??
Maybe the brain is acting like an over-worked
computer – running processes just fine, but unable to relate to the long-term
memory storage. Ah, well. Brain should know. I remember the trip was actually
kind of a joyride.
Going on the photo road trip alone has its
pluses and its big minuses. Plus is I get to drive myself and stop when and for
how long I want. Need not having to justify every extended unexpected point of
the journey. What I should do is get
one of those stickers saying ‘caution, balloon following. Unexpected stops and
swirls.’ That’s how I drive. I just wanna photograph everything. It’s funny how
in places where nobody knows me, my confidence and my attitude is so much more
relaxed and bold. I actually run around with my hair down. I actually engage in
dialogue with total strangers. Many of them museum employees or homeless folk
of the shoot sites, but still.
My first stop was a small, ugly, unpleasant
looking town that grew because of the coal mining industry and they situated
the glass factory there. There are three neighboring towns of this description
there. You can probably get to them through tunnels. I was supposed to
photograph these in winter, but there was such foul weather and the scenery so
bleak, I had no problem bluffing. These towns
are very dear to me, because I am extremely fond of all-engaging establishments
and can walk around, observing their once was way of life with great
compassion. They are things of the past, obviously. In the recent years almost all
of these establishments have gone bankrupt and towns, once industrious and
tightly knit as communities, are just extremely poor and dirty now.
 |
| See these? I know these things! I know how to USE them! There's the coalcase. The water heateing drawer with a tiny pipe. On the next pickie is the table used for making bread (among other things). |
The second, the central, is a full blown mining
station. Another plus to its appeal is the fact it has been shoved into a
really very narrow gorge: narrow so that only a small river, a small road and
one extremely narrow and a mile long building could fit. This town is a bitch
to park in, because these streets were not designed for traffic and lately
everyone has a car. Small and family, but a car nonetheless. If I had come with
Steampunk, I wouldn’t be able to park here at all. A regime of tiny cars would
have improved the situation, but who can afford a tiny car these days.
(Ironically, I saw my very first Microcar today and what’s even more of an
irony, I saw it just as the Batmobile (I’m guessing a really low, prowly, black
Lamborghini with a lion’s roar of thunder for sound) drove past. The later
looked like a joke. I mean, how would you even drive a car like that on our
roads? It’s like taking a crystal shoe on a Paris-Dakar rally.
The best part of the museum tour of this town
is, and I’m not being ironic here, a street called The Field, where historians
have restored the two old worker’s apartments, such as they once were. And such
as the rest of the apartments in the buildings are now, only less neat. Kicker
being, these were actually really nice places to live. When the mines and
factories were built, workers’ families got these homes and that, even now,
seemed like such a sweet deal. I can totally imagine living in a place like
this. Dad working in the mine, mum working in the glass factory… Me, dreaming
about whatever, but ending up in the glass factory as well. My sister working
in the shop, my aunt a grade school teacher. My granddad a local doctor or
something. Sure, that sounds like a nightmare to some, but seeing those apartments,
it feels almost like a fairy tale. I can still REMEMBER some of the items that
are on display there. These are very fond memories of my childhood. Our housekeeper
used to live in a really tight, power-less, waterless deal in old downtown and
I loved it there. Everything was niches! And there were no baths! (I hate
baths.) And everything was small and had a purpose. You couldn’t fit not even a
portion of the things I have in my room alone in that entire apartment. Then
again I am a hoarder. [looks around] Good Gods, the things I keep.
My next stop was the geographical center of the
country. That’s about a half-hour drive up the countryside, over hills, pass
meadows, pass tiny villages, down forest roads, towards nothing, over nothing,
pass villages, down country roads, up a knoll, around nothing with some forest
left on it and there’s the proud monumental flagpole with a date carved in
stone. Check.
Back over the ridge pass, I drove down to the
other river valley (and such a vast and magnificent valley it is, my home), to
shoot a small town with a Roman necropolis in it. The towns on this side of the
ridge, however, are airy, colorful, clean and all over the place. If you grew
up here it was probably because your parents moved here from out of the nearest
larger town where they are working. Must say I’ve never actually been to the
necropolis and just shot it from outside, nor have I ever been to the famous
cave 5 miles northwards, which I also just shot from the outside.
My last stop was a fair half-hour drive up the
river run, through some of the most beautiful small villages I have ever seen
on the entire planet, (prosperous fucking little region, isn’t it), benefiting
mainly from wood-related enterprises and river traffic. There’s photo I was after, as
we didn’t seem to be able to get the rights for it to print it, so I just drove
to the wood industry museum and re-shot it myself. No regrets there at all,
that museum is adorable! And if I wasn’t married I was so high on tiredness and
running around, I would probably have sex with the girl working at the ticket
office right there in the deforestation miniatures room. (Some of that is the
fault of a war victims monument of the town I drove through. I am viciously
attracted to stratus of dying naked men of god-like stature. That has been an
ongoing issue between the General and me, because he still hasn’t forgiven me
for saying I would like to see him die bleeding in my arms after battle. Naked.
Is that really such a strange fantasy to have? It’s not like I actually WANT
that. It’s just a fetish. Some people skin cats for fucksakes. (Still watching
AHS: Asylum.) Moving on.)
The last last stop was hopping over to my
friend who works a couple of small towns up the river for the last cup of
coffee. By then I have already been on the move for twelve hours and my eyes
couldn’t focus properly anymore. I just sat, looking probably like I’ve been
hit by a steamroller, happy, tired to fringes, next to a local poet. My friend
is a shopkeeper and she had to tend to the store periodically, but that wasn’t
unpleasant at all, as I just lay in the chair and felt good about that day.
General was waiting for me with a dinner and having been so bored he cleaned
the entire apartment. I have no idea how I got home. I am a super careful
driver, so that part didn’t worry me, but I have to really think back hard to
remember what we actually ate. I’ve posted some of the photos, which I obviously
made, because that’s what I do when I come home from a shooting spree. And it’s
possible we might have watched a movie. I simply do not know. We probably had
entire conversations with me already long out. The next day I was so tired I could
barely move. But it was a new day and new work orders in the mail. Which is,
oddly, exactly how I love my life to be.
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