I keep returning to that conversation we had on that autumn evening about the tone of fallen leaves. You told me how the room feels from your end, and that smoothness should not be rushed. I agree. You also said to me that you’d rather have it warm. The room is cold, with a hint of warmth, I said, hidden upon the traces of gestures and touch in all the objects it nests. How long ago was that? I still have that image of the lake ahead of us, the sound of waves softly breaking into the bank under the chestnut trees.
Your voice resonated more the other day, as I was roaming around the Teltow Canal and noticed a smooth, echoing, repetitive – though irregular – noise coming closer. At first, it felt like the spanning sound of a broken speaker gone mad, somewhat of a warm shadow. Eventually, I saw someone dragging long aluminum sheets down the street, cars heading in the opposite direction. As I went there to check, I found people who had driven all the way to one of the streets close to Teilestraße only to open their trunks, dump their trash, and leave.
All of a sudden, there it was: a whole archipelago made of garbage, piling up slowly like a range of volcanoes. Scattered upon the road, pieces of plastic, furniture, and garments floated like buoys in murky water. As I saw them spread across the tarmac, longing, the landscape seemed to flicker through reflection. There was a lush green glow, almost like moist, wobbling on the horizon. I could see the traces of hands in the denim creases, water craving for the concrete to open up.
Smoothness should not be rushed, you said. I agree. And yet I can’t help but think of the opening line of Borges’ Aleph, the one where he says that the day after B.V. died, he noticed the replacement of a cigarette billboard in some Buenos Aires square, and that it hurt him, for he felt like the universe was moving away from B.V., and that was just the first of an infinite chain of events. Where did the old billboard end up? How long will it take for these mountains to rot? What type of trees will then grow? Will they be chestnuts or willows?
Apparently, this whole area was a prosperous industrial district sometime at the beginning of the 20th century. It all seemed perfect back then – there was a big road running parallel to a canal connected to the network that stretches all over the continent, boats coming and going, trucks loading up and leaving. The future looked bright. There was a railway, plans for extension, and a port nearby. The building I am in, for instance, used to be a massive chocolate factory. We had to scrub the tiles as we first broke in. The smell never really left.
It all seems so fragile now, almost absurd. And yet it is perfectly reasonable: power is spatial and that can be seen in how space is organised, what’s left in and out, what is useful and what is not. I mean, just look at these long streets, these concrete meadows dotted by falling shutters and empty rooms, the huge crane passively floating in a chain of steel, almost like one of Zettel’s huts, stuck in clouds that might just as well be an extension of the gray tarmac surrounding it. Who gets to decide who waits for what? Who gets to decide that it’s time to leave, that all of a sudden it does not matter anymore?
It’s not that it ends, it’s just that rulers hold the power of fleeing, of hiding the debris of their own rule. Besides, workers will work everywhere they are needed, even if they don’t really get to choose. If profit is the compass of all extractive geographies, then non-profit is their doom. On the other hand, ruins are just a sign that everything that falls has once been brand new. Novelty renews until the point of non-existence. Trash, too. But how long will it take for plastic and concrete to go back to the beginning, for the soil underneath the tarmac to make its way to the surface again, to surpass the violence of abandonment?
People gather in the parking lot to catch up as I write, each sitting at the top of their car. Inside, there’s a tower lying on the floor, mirror blinds hanging from the ceiling. Their reflection makes them transparent. Some of the leaves we talked about are already coated in metal, while some water pipes are breaking out of the walls. There is something palpably alive, haptic, a fragrance lingering in the absence of your body, almost like a whisper. I keep coming back to your voice. The room is still warm.
