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Tuesday 17 September 2013

Hell Goes Round and Round


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Walkway (under the freeway, Oakland): photo by efo, 30 June 2013


Elsewhere, the author wrote:

'Joe had been explaining things in the meantime. He said it was again the beginning of the unfinished, the re-discovery of the familiar, the re-experience of the already suffered, the fresh-forgetting of the unremembered. Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular and by nature it is interminable, repetitive and very nearly unbearable.'


Publisher's Note appended to Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman, 1967




In this file photo from Monday, July 1, 2013, commuters wait in standstill traffic to pay their tolls on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in Oakland, Calif. San Francisco Bay Area commuters braced for the possibility of another train strike as the Bay Area Rapid Transit agency and its workers approached a deadline to reach a new contract deal. The two sides were set to resume negotiations at noon on Thursday, Aug. 1, but did not appear close to an agreement. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

 Commuters wait in standstill traffic to pay their tolls on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in Oakland, California: photo by Ben Margot/AP, 1 July 2013


Flyovers, Oakland: photo by efo, 15 April 2006


MacArthur Maze and former Key System trestle in fog, Oakland: photo by efo, 16 January 2008


MacArthur Maze double, Oakland: photo by efo, 6 May 2005


MacArthur Maze Trestle, Oakland: photo by efo, 6 May 2005


Trainyard redux. Ansco memo. Oakland trainyard beneath the MacArthur Maze: photo by efo, 4 July 2009


MacArthur Maze panorama, Oakland: photo by efo, 12 December 2007



MacArthur Maze multi-panorama, Oakland: photo by efo, 4 July 2009


Zampa Bridge No. 2, Carquinez Straits, Crockett, California: photo by efo, 10 September 2013

120924_petrochemical-14_p102.jpg


Revetment Sign and Hale-Boggs Bridge, West Bank, Mississippi River, Luling, Louisiand, 1998: photo by Richard Misrach, from Richard Misrach and Kate Orff: Petrochemical America, 2012

10 comments:

ACravan said...

You said it. Curtis

Nin Andrews said...

You really captured it.

Be the BQE said...

Thanks, Tom,
At last, I understand why belt highways always seemed like a version of hell! Strong echoes of Beckett in this wonderful Flann O'Brien piece.
-David

TC said...

Thanks, friends. They say America has a billion stories. Or was it a million? 500 million?

And this, sad to report, is just one of them.

Don't really like being stuck out with my defenseless medicare cane on the freeway feeder below the 6-spoke corkscrew roundabout imitating prospective road kill so much any more... but some nights, there's this restless feeling...

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

"beginning of the unfinished . . . re-discovery of the familiar . . . fresh-forgetting of the unremembered"

efo's great photos -- roll on commuters, down those freeways, toward that bridge that leads us to the sky

manik sharma said...

Tom,

I love the link.Pretty funny and sad at the same time. As for hell,perhaps
"monster" trucks would feel quite at home on the freeway..being in one of them ? i'm not sure about that..

Hazen said...

Efo’s black-and-whites are perfect for depicting what used to be called high-speed travel, before it became instead the hell of the daily commute, ‘the re-experience of the already suffered.’ What’s on the car radio? Maybe we’ll find The Music Goes ‘Round and Around” (and it comes out here) . . . an antidote of sorts.

Mose23 said...

We have our own version of hell round our way.. Apparently they wanted to prettify it.

Flann and efo make a perfect fit here.

vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras) said...

This post gives a whole new dimension to that old saying “Hell on Wheels”.

TC said...

I fear that Spaghetti Junction Project will never be a patch on the MacArthur Maze until they are able to exhume a full harvest of gangster corpses from under the Trestle.

(Perhaps that's why they've summmoned in the "American internationalists" on the project... ?)