Incandescent Limbo - From West Street to Govanhill

There's a lot of physics in my metaphysics. Kenneth White

Wandering is a necessary precursor to wondering. A city such as Glasgow, with its vast spread of interconnected villages and communities, and in spite of its sometimes awkward body, presents us with many occasions for both wondering and wandering. Some see the city increasingly as a chaotic mess, but this is certainly not true of Glasgow whose geographic width, occupying as it does much of the western midland valley (and the surrounding hills), can dissipate fairly easily any chaos that may arise. At any rate, in chaos there is opportunity.

But you've got to get out into it - wander it out, wonder it through.... it's only by getting through the city, physically-metaphysically, that you'll come out the other end, into the hills, and into the light. If truth be told, I am like a rat who knows his territory so well, his escape routes, his paths to the food (physical/metaphysical), that there is no recourse for stress, for neuroses. The city, then, becomes a calm place to be. It does not dictate what should be done but instead offers opportunities, opportunities that are now, emphatically, in the light. This is the paradox: having gone through the city and come out into the hills, and into the light, I am still in the city.

['The Empty City'  Kilbirnie Street, Port Eglinton]

From the underground at West Street (it could well be the moon for its desolate isolation), I head towards Govanhill. As the earth turns to collect the last light of the sun, the face of Kilbirnie Street glows. Even in the most hostile environment there is beauty! And, in the desolate, a glowing ember for the heart...

[St. Andrew's Gas Works, Pollokshaws Road, December 12th 2012]

Passing Eggy Toll (Eglinton Toll) I note a couple of fine pieces of architecture dating from roughly a century ago. The most recent additions, however, can hardly qualify as architecture since in their functionality appear almost completely devoid of any aesthetic. I'm speaking of these new fangled 'luxury apartment complexes' (the name itself should set alarm bells ringing - beauty need not call itself beauty!) which are springing up all over the city with depressing regularity. I find myself looking at the works 'of old', solid, tectonic buildings with the gods of love and attention still inhabiting their finely wrought details. Look at this one above - ok, so it's a little run-down but you can't deny the gods that still live in those arches, those rondels and finials, its scale and material. This great structure communes with the weather, grows old with it.  The new 'cattle-sheds' that are being thrown up (vomited forth) have no such communion with the landscape. It's all cardboard, plastic, glass and steel - no sensibility to the weather, no attachment to the land, little solidity, even less durability (durability in a short-termist economy is counter-productive) and spaciousness. It's all a little pokey and depressing as if people no longer care what they live in, how they dwell, what they inhabit. Give me a tenement any day of the week!

Which leads me to Ardbeg Street in Govanhill, number 21 right at the top, round the corner from the wonderful library (just look at those domes, those pediments and pedestals!). It was here at 21 Ardbeg Street where the radical Glaswegian pyschiatrist Ronald David Laing lived for the first third of his life. There is a small plaque attached to the wall above the close entrance. It simply reads R.D. Laing was born here...

I feel like adding one of his poems, brighten it up a little....

All in all each man in all men

all men in each man

all being in each being

all in each 

each in all

all distinctions are mind,

by mind, in mind, of mind,

no distinctions, no mind to distinguish.

A little further east (what other possible direction is there after this?), I come across this in Boyd Street, and my afternoon is complete...

The B-listed Govanhill Picture House opened in 1926. Built to the designs of Eric A. Sutherland, it featured a
unique Egyptian-styled facade, with columns and a moulded scarab above the entranceway. It is now currently being used as a warehouse, and plans are afoot to demolish it and build.... a luxury apartment complex. Thankfully, the facade is to be retained. Small mercy for such a fantastic structure.