The Minimal Map

The Earth as a Filing Cabinet

"I hired a surveyor, who furnished the Machiguengas with a precise map of their homeland... ...The topographic map that he furnished was, he explained, in certain ways incorrect. It did not correspond to the truth because it did not take into account the curvature of the earth. In such a little piece of land? I asked, losing patience. Of course, he said angrily, and pushed his water glass toward me. Even with a glass of water, you have to be clear about it, what we’re dealing with is not an even surface. You should see the curvature of the earth as you would see it on an ocean or a lake. If you were really able to perceive it exactly as it is—but you are too simple-minded—you would see the earth curve. I will never forget this harsh lesson." 

- Werner Herzog

That account was from Herzog trying to establish land entitlement for the Machiguengas of Peru as part of his deal for filming them (You can read more as he opens a discourse between Reality and Truth). In order to establish land entitlement, he needed;

1. A map delineating the land in question

2. Documents to prove land entitlement

It's catch 22. The Machigeungas only claim to the land was through their grandparents, word of mouth, their own existence. But land doesn't produce documents. We do. 

Set of Fitzcarraldo with Machigeungas

Placing a system of bureaucracy on Earth is bound to be fallible because, like the Projections post I put up earlier, it doesn't correlate at all to what's there. You take the 3 Dimensional thing and treat it like it's 2 Dimensional. After a while you start to believe that's how the world is, a static 2 dimensional thing and when reality pokes it heads up, it makes a mess of your 2 Dimensional map. 

Yet we insist our world fit into this 2 Dimensional map! We insist the world fit the view of a bureaucratic filing cabinet. Observe the island disputes between the UK and Argentina, China and Japan, do you know what they're doing? They're 'back dating claims' to land. Yes, that's right, the very same thing you would do if you applied for unemployment benefits or go through tax payments. Except this isn't money (our own construct), this is land and it's often forgotten there are people living on that land. Bureaucratic things work better in regards to things produced from bureaucratic procedures. It does not work well when you apply it to a living system. Living systems are not bureaucratic procedures; 

- they don't compartmentalise very well

- they use a different language

- they are not balanced (T-Rex isn't here, now we are. Go figure)

- they handle conflict differently

- they don't sit still. This last point retroactively applies to all of the criteria just mentioned, bureaucracy can't deal with the effects of time.  

Land (this earth), things upon it, above and below it is a living 'system'. I use the word system at arms length, perhaps living fabrics, or mesh, or layered ecologies are a few more ways to actively describe it. How we describe the world affects how we see it and I'm all for re-describing it. Something honest that isn't relentlessly squeezing our expectations from it, but can accept it (as much as we are able to) for what is. As Herzog says, to get to The Truth. 

Saying that, if T-Rex came back from the dead with documents claiming ownership of England I would be the first to offer my friends as a meal of approval to his/her leadership.

America Face

My notifications seem to be stuck somewhere in the Americas.

Should this globe start spinning I'll have all kinds of notifications, some say tens* should it manage to swing across europe

(*based on my own research)

Projections

(Map from openstreetmap then scribbled on top)

Automated Coincidence

Today it's a cool 20c. Not suicide weather.

Or should I say, if you did commit suicide there would be no paradigm shift. The trees & flowers would remain the same. Flying insects, with the freedom to take position anywhere in the vast cubic dimensions of space, will still opt for landing in your eye. People will still hide behind their ineptitude for driving with self righteous announcements of stupidity, "use the cycle lane!" (because the throne of stupidity in one part of their brain discussed it with the council of stupidity in the other part of their brain and concluded it to be so. Laws of the real world get in the way of this ageless system). Meanwhile the council in the real world would guarantee the cycle lane rode like someone repeatedly hitting you up the arse with a baseball bat. 

Conversely, there will always be a junction with a cyclist stranded in no man's land, perfectly placed where s/he can't see a traffic light and waiting directly in the path of an oncoming car. Perhaps it's a challenge to the consistent mechanics of the world, "Vehicles can't always follow the same trajectory in a system with defined lanes!" - the rebellious voice of the urban lemming.

God knows why the earth is so finely tuned in this manner. 

It's a consistent mantra that great numbers of people living in the countryside shuffled over to the city in the past 100 years and the easy conclusion is we're all teething together. All impulses, and impulses breed similar impulses. After all, the spontaneous meeting of people in public/open space operates under a fine window of time, so the cordial nod to a passer-by or barking frustrated curse can be reciprocated in the same time it takes to check your watch (because waiting in a public space seems to bring these urgent performances, "I'm waiting so I'll check my watch. That's what people do when they're waiting, I've seen it on a music video". Have you ever waited for someone in the countryside? If its dry, you can lie down - and imagine insects crawling up your shirt). 

God knows why the earth is so finely tuned in this manner. With so many people close together it's not necessarily so that we have to process each other this quickly. In some cultures (which I have just made up) speed is not a currency. 

I will conclude this post with a picture of a pub I used to frequent over a decade ago.  

Still there.

Now you see it, now you...

The Lived Experience

The outdoor place can be a wonderful thing. I enjoy the sense of 'now', a process which wisemen of the east could gift to you through the insight of tales. Tales of mountains, zen masters and a hungover student in the backseat asking, "are we there yet?" over and over again.  

I hold no such insight, for my most frequent reaction to facing a new environment is this

...

Do you see it? 

That was an attempt to convey the 'blank sensation'. 

As I pass through new territory, I'd like to believe that under my gormless facade sits a brain threading together the unfolding arrangement of landscape features, distance and weather into a delicious casserole, one that releases steaming calculus into the air when you cut into it! But it's blank. Therefore, I'm grateful for the supplements found in documentaries, pictures and yes, writing!

The Reflected Experience

However, sometimes reading about places can leave one in the following stations;

1. The information station

2. The haunted territory station

The information station reminds me of a scene from The Trip, a TV show featuring Coogan and Brydon.

(if this link doesn't work, it features Coogan looking over a beautiful landscape yet having a passer by ruin it by regurgitating information of the geological process) 

No one wants to be ear beaten or feel like they're reading through a manual (for the record, I believe manuals can be written and laid out very well! I also believe most of those have been stolen by giants). However, I love finding out how things work!  

The haunted territory station is one where a description of 'now' contains information of what came before it. This is a mind boggling world as one is constantly re-clarifying the links of now and then whilst being juggled around in the author's psyche. Most of what I'm reading is in this latter category. However, it's not only in words that landscapes have turned into ghosts, but in images too. I was hoping to take a photo of this sign, located in essex. 

Yesterday I found it was gone. Now I hold it here as a piece of digital archeology.

Essex is moving up in the world. 

Radio On and the scales of change

"Why do the english always want to live by the sea?"

"It's the last resort"

"huh?"

"They always think it's gonna be better than it is"


Wie gehts holmeslice! Ahem, Radio On follows a trip from London to Bristol. Like a lot of road movies there's a vague ambience to the journey which is interestingly contrasted in a technical and precise delivery. 

A car pulls over so we can get down to some bladder alleviation. In the same shot, the passenger opens the door, 

...exits and takes a leak with the door performing some wonderful groin censorship. Remember, this choreography is just for a guy having a piss - I told you it was technical.


Thoughtfully shot, beautiful photography and a soundtrack we could proudly send to aliens as a declaration of our sensual ingenuity.

But this is not a review or recommendation of the film (though for those curious, I would recommend it on a day when nothing needs to happen. It's also available via a certain daily motion website. You didn't hear it from me, tigerbalm)

Shot in 1979, I couldn't help but compare artifacts. In general, small things can be susceptible to rapid change;

Cassette tapes

Vinyl

Television (if you can stack amps, you can stack tellys)

At the living room scale, we start to slow down. The TV might be the give away but the bauhaus style lamp is still available to purchase at a retail centre near you.

 And bigger scales, what about nature?

Take away the lens and its quite familiar. Slow rates of change to landscape but it is certain change (middle picture is a quarry). Even looking at gardens now you will find fewer variations in styles than compared to houses. Especially in the UK, we're pretty conservative, that's how we roll.

There's an interesting remark in the film about the phrase, "pylons spoil the countryside". I don't hear that anymore, it's been usurped by wind turbines. 

Pylons are just so 1979.

Nighty night pixel readers!