 | Disappearing PlacesAn archive and collective map of places that no longer exist, at least not as they once did. |
Someone Else's House Now
Posted On Monday September 17, 2007 By Matthew
I remember having rootbeer floats on the porch swing on hot summer nights. I remember eating sweet corn and chocolate cake on my birthdays. I remember playing with my cousins and the neighbors in the side yard. I remember running to the train tracks just a few blocks away and counting the train cars (sometimes over 100!) as they streamed by. I remember “Uncle” Bill showing me his missing finger that he lost while working the trains. I remember my 103 year old great-grandmother Lila waking up at dawn every morning to cook everyone breakfast (bacon and eggs). I remember walking to the corner store to buy comics and baseball cards with my mother. This is someone else’s house now but my memories still live there.
Tags: great-grandmother, house, memories, summer
Comment [1]
Windiest, Coldest Place
Posted On Monday May 21, 2007 By Lisa Roberts
Here is a drawing I made in February 2002, from the top of Mount Henderson, south of Mawson station in Antarctica. The wave form on the right is my voice sounding the word “katabatic”. This is the name of the fierce wind driven by gravity from the top of Antarctica’s vast ice dome down to the coast.
Mawson is one of the windiest places on earth. But the day I drew this was complete stillness – so still I could hear the blood pumping through my head, and a penguin crying from the far away coast.
Antarctica is Gondwanaland nolonger. Once alive to the colours and sounds of myriad living things, the place is now a cold white desert.
The words, pictures and stories of a whalo (whale observer) first inspired me to go to Antarctica. They reminded me how, as a small child, I was told about this place, and how the pictures I was shown and words I had heard used to describe it had fascinated me. But I had never imagined myself there until meeting her.
Only when I arrived there did the words of Antarctica even begin to have meaning. The place had got to work on me, and I began to see my own Antarctic landscape; or at least a small part of it. And there was a sense of isolation in that. I know we all see the world differently, but I was more aware of that there than anywhere.
Tags: antarctica, ice, mawson, mountain, penguin, stillness
Comment
Shiny Things
Posted On Tuesday May 1, 2007 By Jerry Powell
I’ve always been attracted to odd bits of neon; in fact, I spent several months combing most major streets in Austin looking for interesting larger-scale neon signs and other assorted shiny things in town. Call me simple, right?
This indoor neon display appeared to me one Thursday night after I’d had a late therapy session and something clicked in my brain. It’s in what was a common office area for two companies, Zocalo Design & Advertising and The Neon Jungle. It was across the parking lot from another neon vendor, but these were the more interesting pieces, in my opinion, particularly in the way they were assembled together.
Driving up South Lamar a few weeks ago, I noticed that both companies were out of the space; Zocalo leaving South Lamar for a posher space on East Sixth downtown, and The Neon Jungle off to parts unknown.
Tags: austin, neon, signs
Comment