Sunday, 25 March 2018

covered with algae

I was stuck at the Park and Ride for ten minutes, waiting for the bus, fiddling with my camera, like you do. I suddenly became aware of a lady waiting for me, so as not to get in my way. I smiled and waved her by. I'm wasn't photographing anything. Just the mess on the awning, in the bleak light of morning.

redbridge algae abstracts

It was the dramatic shading that caught my eye; the charcoalish smear of the staining algae. Up close you can see the colour. Green, the colour of life, of spring, of an ecosystem sparking up, starting a life. And here it is, beginning, in the bleakest place; coated aluminium coated again in algae, the dirt that lives.

redbridge algae abstracts

Oh, do not pressure wash it. There are trees, and birds, and moss aplenty; rats gambolling in the litter bins and urban foxes sleeking through the hedges. Overhead, Red kites flirt and fight in the thermals over the asphalt. This gentle burnish on the edges of the shelter blur it into the surrounding habitat. The Park and Ride and its environment.

redbridge algae abstracts   redbridge algae abstracts

The blackish substrate you can see, that the algae is growing on, is road dust, exhaust fumes, dust kicked up by wheels and sticky micropollutant clusters. All the filth of the world of the car; and yet there is algae, growing on it, green as life.

redbridge algae abstracts

I wonder, is it out of the reach of hungry snails there? Or have they not yet woken up for the spring, in this bleak outpost?

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