"You have stood before some landscape..."
Mar. 11th, 2008 12:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pyatThe time change means that I’m riding the train home during sunset, instead of in the dark. This means I can see the parts of Hamilton that were previously hidden on my commute to and from Toronto. I can now see the gorgeous vista of Cootes Paradise and Burlington Bay spread out to west and east as I enter the west end of the city, all frozen and coloured by the dimming rays of the sun. As the train pulls into the city, the old brick homes and stone churches of the lower city rise on either side of the track, clustered together like cozy human rookeries. Then, a long tunnel, and a sudden emergence into sunlight by the stone walls of Whitehern House.
Looking westward over Cootes Paradise always evokes a peculiar feeling of sennsucht, the desire for a city I’ve never seen, for a countryside that lies just out of reach beyond the hills. I know for a fact that beyond those hills there are simply houses and streets, and eventually farms and flat land, but I suppose that just makes it all the more poignant.
Sadly, I only had my cell phone camera with me today, and had to photograph the scene through a dirty train window, from across an aisle, so you can only catch a fleeting glimpse of the fleeting glimpse of "...a country we have never yet visited." You get the impression that, if only the train would stop here, you could disembark and walk to Arcadia.
"That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves."
Looking westward over Cootes Paradise always evokes a peculiar feeling of sennsucht, the desire for a city I’ve never seen, for a countryside that lies just out of reach beyond the hills. I know for a fact that beyond those hills there are simply houses and streets, and eventually farms and flat land, but I suppose that just makes it all the more poignant.
Sadly, I only had my cell phone camera with me today, and had to photograph the scene through a dirty train window, from across an aisle, so you can only catch a fleeting glimpse of the fleeting glimpse of "...a country we have never yet visited." You get the impression that, if only the train would stop here, you could disembark and walk to Arcadia.
"That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves."
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Date: 2008-03-11 05:03 am (UTC)HPL wrote a whole novel based on that feeling.
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Date: 2008-03-11 11:02 am (UTC)Incidentally, I think I know how you feel. I've never heard or read the word sennsucht before, but the nameless urge to be in a city I've never seen is probably part of the reason I write and draw. I've been haunted by such feelings for years. Shame I haven't quite captured any such places satisfactorily in my art yet. It's definitely at the heart of The Bride of War.
Lee.
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Date: 2008-03-11 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-03-11 02:19 pm (UTC)*nods* The Call of Cthulhu!
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