From my living room window, a small spaceship cloud hangs quietly over the Campsie Fells. It doesn’t appear to move yet it does. It doesn’t appear to say anything yet it sings. As it caresses the crown of the Kilsyth Hills, it calls to me, and beckons me into the fells.
This morning, on the radio: Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin.
Co-incidences no longer surprise me, but they do make me smile :)
There's something special about sunshine in Glasgow, that rarest of creatures. To be sure, I'm a cloud and rain kinda guy at heart (are not all true poets?), but you can't beat a bit of unfettered sunlight, with perhaps a few wispy cirrus, or a couple of spaceships. The view from my window, northwards, takes me over what I like to think of as the five anchors of man:
1. 'Science', in the form of the titanium-clad, hog-backed Science Centre (2001) by the river.
2. 'Knowledge', as the Gothic Gilbert Scott building of Glasgow University (1870) on Gilmorehill.
3. 'Art', in the form of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery (1901) in front of the aforementioned Gilbert Scott building, and of course those French-roofed townhouses of Park Terrace (1855).
4. 'Religion' in the rising Romanesque belfries of Trinity College (formerly The Free Church College) (1856-61), and Park Parish Church (1856-7).
5. 'Medicine', as Ruchill Hospital's 50m tall neo-Jacobean water-tower (1895), (currently undergoing a makeover).
Perhaps I should add 'Media' as a sixth, in the form of the new glassy BBC studios on Pacific Quay, or even 'Music' as a seventh with the Clyde Auditorium and the new Hydro Arena just peaking out above the BBC.
But they are all eclipsed, no matter how numerous they are, and as beautiful and as solid as they may be, by the backbone of the Campsie Fells mesa in the background. Every morning I find myself silently standing in awe, in a sort of prayer, to these hills, this stratovolcanic plateau, as it flows slowly across time and space, and the city. Even when cloud and mist prevent my seeing it I can still feel its magnetism, and its pull. Not so with science, knowledge, art, religion and medicine.
1. 'Science', in the form of the titanium-clad, hog-backed Science Centre (2001) by the river.
2. 'Knowledge', as the Gothic Gilbert Scott building of Glasgow University (1870) on Gilmorehill.
3. 'Art', in the form of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery (1901) in front of the aforementioned Gilbert Scott building, and of course those French-roofed townhouses of Park Terrace (1855).
4. 'Religion' in the rising Romanesque belfries of Trinity College (formerly The Free Church College) (1856-61), and Park Parish Church (1856-7).
5. 'Medicine', as Ruchill Hospital's 50m tall neo-Jacobean water-tower (1895), (currently undergoing a makeover).
Perhaps I should add 'Media' as a sixth, in the form of the new glassy BBC studios on Pacific Quay, or even 'Music' as a seventh with the Clyde Auditorium and the new Hydro Arena just peaking out above the BBC.
But they are all eclipsed, no matter how numerous they are, and as beautiful and as solid as they may be, by the backbone of the Campsie Fells mesa in the background. Every morning I find myself silently standing in awe, in a sort of prayer, to these hills, this stratovolcanic plateau, as it flows slowly across time and space, and the city. Even when cloud and mist prevent my seeing it I can still feel its magnetism, and its pull. Not so with science, knowledge, art, religion and medicine.
There's something deeply rewarding in waking up to this view. It is a quiet rhapsody, in blue... in grey... in all the colours... an epic poem in stone that draws you in to its core.
It renews my faith (faith as openness, as an act of trust in the unknown) every morning. There is no greater cathedral than this.
'Looking North' (28.11.12)
'Are we all just primitive beings whose towers have been destroyed?' Gerard de Nerval
'The Leap of Faith Beyond Science, Art and Knowledge'
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