Days of Heaven

This part of the city is an afterthought. Lingering between being forgotten and being built. As if someone once left random parts in an unlabelled box, and told someone else to make use of them. There is a business park, a park built for the Olympics, a theology school whose pink spire and cross still feel novel. Countless identical matchbox-like apartments. Predominantly grey. A village tucked away with its own enclosures and unpaved roads. A tennis court, a golf course, a ghostly office complex . At five o'clock, the wave of traffic rushes through in pink and green. What else is there? Restaurants and shops whose neon signs flicker with the dwindling clienteles. More side streets that look like they are not just temporarily abandoned during the national holiday.   

There is also a river, filled with sewage, rubbish and algae. During this time of the year, there are ducklings and despite the cold, and futile water, people fishing on the banks. Perhaps the city has no river, only tributaries and canals that join reservoirs on the outskirts. This one simply transects a blank residential area, like the faintest pencil line on paper. 

This evening, the sun was a molten and shimmering bar of orange. Three black swans with flaming red beaks lingered near the bank. Water was flowing through the dam with a low, clear sound. One of the swans was asleep. Beak tucked away in the feathers, forming a perfect buoy. Another swan kept brushing its beak against the sleeping thing, disturbing the slumber and causing it to ripple its neck towards the sky. The third swan moved alone. 

The sound of the water, the scudding clouds above. I had the feeling that everything I have felt towards a landscape funnelled through here. The past funnelled through the present, rather than the opposite. 

I could retrace moments of awe, where in complete isolation, I thought I had touched something new. All of which are felt here. Yet none of them are quite real without this place. A landscape where I am not alone, and not searching. 

I walked by a fisherman whose bucket displayed the day’s catch. Four or five grey-scaled fish. Urban fish from urban river. I am unsure if the fishermen keep going there out of persistence or languidness. Someone asked him what kind of fish they are. I had forgotten the answer. 

On the walk back, I looked up and the lines between the pylons had formed a sort of music score. Above which hang a bright and isolated half moon. A wisp of pink cloud blew into the distance, sinking into the blue. A fragile blue. The sky also reminded me something from a long time ago. A drawing or painting I saw that has a celestial feeling, of smallness and carefully placed dusts that twinkled.
 
Everyday, the crows fly west in the evening. They rise out of barren winter trees and disturb the musty pink sky. Today, there was even a heron.
 
Everyday has no weight or meaning. Like days of heaven, even kids feel old.