The City of Your Final Destination

[Eric]

Well, it's a good idea, but a bit narrow. It's what we in Europe call "waste ground". I can't understand how this journalist Michael Bourne can intellectualise so much about a dismal strip of grass and weeds amidst desolate buildings. It's not my dreamscape, I can assure you.

[Liam]

I think it was a brilliant idea! What else were they supposed to do? They weren't going to use it as a track b/c there are now better and faster ways to move stuff across Manhattan; and they weren't going to demolish it: because then they would have to block off a comercially viable area of the City, and we're talking about a LOT of city blocks here as the High Line is very long. Whoever came up with the idea of turning it green, deserves a genius grant.

[Eric]

Obviously, they should have demolished some more of the desolate buildings surrounding the overpass, or walkway, and made a park out of the new space. The idea of creating green spaces is positive. But the walkway idea, although interesting, simply highlights the desolation of the cityscape in that area. In a civilised country, the problem with rapists and flashers in big parks is cut down to a minimum. This walkway idea is a kind of palliative to Big Brother in what is probably a fairly lawless area. In other words, with all those buildings overlooking the walkway would give most potential exposure & insertion experts a limp dick.

[Eric]

Empty lives, empty flats (or apartments, as they say over the pond):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...the-world.html

Some people will fall for anything the estate agent says.

[Liam]

Found a beautiful picture of Gdansk today:

Gdansk.jpg

[Eric]

G'day! There is one essential thing you must understand about Gdansk: it is a bit of a theatre set or film set, like the Old Town in Warsaw. The theatre set may, by now be about half a century old, but most of those buildings in Liam's nice photo were lovingly restored from rubble by Polish restorers. Many younger people haven't a clue about the Second World War, but it wasn't all jolly exciting battles, as we see in those monthly war magazines that publishers endlessly churn out. There were real bombings and deaths involved, not only Auschwitz and Dresden but a hell of a lot more (with stress on the hell).

When I visited Gdansk in the mid-1970s, I think, it was all rebuilt, like in Liam's pretty photo. But it should not be forgotten that WWII started at Westerplatte, near a place appropriately calle Hel. That is not very far from Gdansk (once the German city of Danzig in a small enclave of German-speakers in what was termed "the Polish Corridor"). Gdansk is also near the port of Gdynia and the seaside resort Sopot.

The tragedy is that when the Allies (i.e USA, UK, Russia) bombed the city in 1945, this was to liberate it from the German Nazis. This had, in fact, been a German city sometimes, and a Polish city other times, for centuries. But from 1945 to 1989, it was a Polish city, under the tutelage of the Soviet Union (aka Russia). So the people there were not exactly free. Another unjust event was that the German-speakers were thrown out of Gdansk, not by the Yanks or Brits, but by the Russians. So the rather idealistic idea of the Free City of Danzig (1920-1939) was completely obliterated by the Second World War.

Read about Gdansk here, it's not all "Tin Drum" territory and pretty house fronts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gda%C5%84sk

[Eric]

P.S.

A further irony of Gdansk (the former Danzig) is that it is now twinned with Kaliningrad (the former Königsberg, a German city, now a Russian one). But while the Poles lovingly restored the old German-built houses, as Liam's photo shows, the Russians, threw all the Germans out of Königsberg and environs after WWII (collective guilt for all German-speakers) and filled its replacement, Kaliningrad, with Russian industrial workers instead (read Marion Dönhoff's account of this). The Russians built masses of soulless, typically Soviet, blocks of high-rise flats, like the Chinese are doing now in their biggest cities.

The approach to history by the new owners of Gdansk and Kaliningrad is highly symbolic. Günter Grass wrote a famous novel about Danzig. I do not know one of equal fame about Königsberg (though Kant lived there in the 18th century).

To "get" these cities, you have to know your history. And it's all there in the Wikipedia, if only you care to look.

[Liam]

Storm in NYC

[Hamlet]

My, that's an angry looking sky.

[kpjayan]

If any of you, ever decide to live in my city, here is a new book that is getting released tomorrow :-)

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/a...qs-information

Living in Bengaluru.jpg

[Eric]

I see that it's called Bangaluru. Which language is that?

Actually, some scenes from a play by the Finland-Swedish author Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo called "Lit de Parade" will be appearing in my English translation in a literary magazine in Bangalore. But I'm afraid I don't know the name of the magazine as the author herself is handling that end of things, because she was in Bangalore some while back.

[kpjayan]

I see that it's called Bangaluru. Which language is that?

That's in the local lanuage 'Kannada'. most of the anglisized names of the cities and towns in India are now trying to change itself to the older names. Bombay became Mumbai, Calcutta to Kolkata, Madras to Chennai .. Bangalore to Bengaluru.

[Eric]

I thought it might be Kannada, because a lady I met from Bangalore, now a professor of English who translates between Kannada and English, told me about it about 15 years ago.

[kpjayan]

a play by the Finland-Swedish author Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo called "Lit de Parade" will be appearing in my English translation in a literary magazine in Bangalore.

Was this for any Magazine or was it for 'Sangam House" ? To my knowledge there aren't any major literary magazines published from Bangalore. Sangam house, I understand has the concept of bringing the international and Indian writers together for sharing, and woking together.

http://www.sangamhouse.org/the-idea/

Their season 3 program, has/had Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo as one of the participant.

[Eric]

Yes, Kpjayan, I looked at my e-mails from the author closely and it is not a magazine but a Sangam House anthology. I imagine it's going to be "Other People - the Sangam House Reader, volume 1", as mentioned here:

http://www.sangamhouse.org/publications/

There are not so many people called Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo who happen to have cooperated with Sangam House. So I imagine this is the same person. The play itself, whence the excerpt, is about death and burial, rather an unusual subject for a play. It goes into the details and has a cast of three.

[Eric]

Which reminds me: the city of our final destination for most of us is the cemetery aka graveyard.

[Eric]

Isn't this where you'd like to live?

[kazangab]

If any of you, ever decide to live in my city, here is a new book that is getting released tomorrow :-)

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/a...qs-information

Living in Bengaluru.jpg

I had been in Bangalore.I had lived there 5 months.I think its really good city but its not good for people who want to live silent and peacefull life as final destination
viva Bangalore

[Eric]

So, where do you live now, kazamgab? In the city of your final destination? Show us a piccy or two?

[kazangab]

So, where do you live now, kazamgab? In the city of your final destination? Show us a piccy or two?

I live in İstanbul and I hope my final destination also will be İstanbul.

If the Earth were a single state, Constantinople would be its capital.(Napoleon Bonaparte)