Sabre - Braes that Slice the Bodymind Open

That's what these braes are (my oracle said as much as I was descending them today): an original (cliff) face that helps you understand your own original face. This, however, appears to be a contradiction in terms: the face as fascia and surface (and thus superficial if not artificial) versus the original and 'that which originates' presumably from the depths. Yet, it's this contradiction (this speaking against) - depth and surface, artifice and originality - that eventually cuts you open like a sabre. Because it's not really a contradiction but a communication. Which is what these braes are in a roundabout way.

Saber (n.)

Type of single-edged sword, 1670s, from French sabre "heavy, curved sword" (17c.), alteration of sable (1630s), from German Sabel, Säbel, probably ultimately from Hungarian szablya "saber," literally "tool to cut with," from szabni "to cut."

If you look at the strath that Glasgow  sits in you will see the hills, braes and fells form a sort of sabre around the valley with an open end towards the east. The hills do not encircle Glasgow completely, but 'sabre' it as in 'almost encircle', or as in 'a heavy curve'.  So, it comes as a happy coincidence that the word 'braes' also contains the letters for the word 'sabre'. Because if the above contradiction doesn't slice you open, walking and/or cycling them most certainly will.

 

 

 

From this footbridge over the expressway we can see the tops of all three sides of the curved sabre. Here, looking west, we can see (just) behind the high-rises on the right of the image the Kilpatrick braes and hills.

 

 

 

Looking south, I can see (with the naked eye) the unmistakeable bend of the 'kissing tree' behind Barrhead and Ferenese Golf Course. Amazing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking south-east, we fall upon the Cathkin braes... 

It is important for city-dwellers to have aspects that give onto the country, flightlines for the soul. I did a blogpost very early on about 'Hills that live at the ends of streets'. It's one of my favourite posts that I made into a photographic artist book. When these flightlines into the outside become blocked by constructors and their monstrous buildings we ourselves become violated and 'blocked'. This is the danger of living in a city like London or Paris (et al.). You can't see anything of the outside from the city. And when this happens you no longer have a city but a 'shithole'.

 

 Don't let Glasgow become one too...