You are just passing through

Approaching storm over Zurichsee

 

Always remember you are just passing through – that’s what comes into my mind after seeing the first few photos of Hokkaido by Daido Moriyama,  photos of urban landscapes, streets with crumbly buildings all pushed together, and wires, wires, and how you wouldn’t want to live there, women walking in rain – or snow – empty landscapes, straight road, sky hanging low – people on a train (one asleep), a cat, a child, running – crowded cities then empty landscape, a snarling bear, or dog, a bus, trees, poplar, a poster of faces with creases and folds (because of the paper).
 

And all the time these cracking sounds, at first I think they are sound effects to the photos then realise they are in the building, probably parts of the roof or in the walls, parts being moved and banged by wind. 

A young woman with a beautiful face, smokes a cigarette, turns around, with that hostile, almost angry look of someone disturbed, feeling their space and privacy being intruded on. The goods train carriage on a single urban track, with smoky air above and around it. A crowd of headscarfed women; people in trains (asleep, with papers scattered on the floor) one person on a train platform, another in a train doorway, half open, she is reading a book and wears a mid-calf length summer dress; desolate urban flatscape at the edge of town where the houses end; bird flying over sea; pier in bad weather, rundown buildings, scarred facades, market; child by train tracks; boat and spray; shops and shops and wires and wires; wooded hill (first non desolate landscape), cable cars, steep street (reminds me of San Francisco); abandoned shoe, broken car; mist or snow, headlights, train tracks, no people; looking downhill, a single tram track; steep street and tangled wires; young woman walking along a street, wearing elegant skirt and jacket.

This exhibition at Edinburgh’s Gallery of Modern Art is finished now otherwise I would recommend it. But Daido Moriyama has published many photo books, which I’m going to search out in the library.

I walked to the Gallery following a different route, through unknown spaces – almost a series of impasses…..The first cemetery from the main road, Queensferry Road, had no outlet. A high wall surrounds it, yet the top parts of adjoining buildings are visible. Traffic sounds. This does not feel calm enough, restful enough, and there is no way through to the cemetery behind it, the Dean, which I want to reach. So, after walking right round, it’s back to the gate and out again into the street, named Dean Path.  Continue uphill to the entrance to the next cemetery, Friedhof, place of peace. And this is the real resting place. A view out over the valley – there are even steps and a path downhill – to the buildings and rooftops beyond, on the other side. There are no traffic sounds. But I don’t explore, because my aim is to find a way out and through, to the Dean Gallery, then across the road to the Gallery of Modern Art.

I walk round, heading in that direction. Many enormous stone slabs and small simple ones – the more recent ones.  A most ostentatious one has entwined herons round an upright obelisk with other fauna round the foot. This person was a Writer to the Signet so clearly ‘a person of importance’. I don’t recall the name, it was the sheer size of the stone, the needle about twice my height and the presence of the slender herons that intrigued me. Nowadays – we know we are so many, and we want to take up as little space as possible. The trees are all dark, as dark as the stones – black trees and dark grey charcoal coloured stones. Only a couple of people walk past. 

I follow the path up to the wall at the side of the Dean Gallery – but there’s no way through the wall, it continues with its surrounding encirclement, its protection of the peace, the shades, the tranquil or dormant memories. The space does feel restful, peaceful. This tranquillity feels admirable to me – and I realise the importance of the trees. I think of the huge sycamore tree in the Horgen Friedhof, close to Annemarie’s grave.

Horgen cemetery, Switzerland

 

I sat for a while in its shade. Trees are such protectors, such peace-givers.
I’ll come back here, that’s what I think, in summer, when the trees are in leaf and sunlight and leaf shade make patterns on the paths and the gravestones.

I keep walking, following the wall at the side of the Dean Gallery. There are no gaps in it that I can see & I think I will have to go back all the way to the entrance and find some other way – it’s going to be the second impasse of the day. And then – I spot a path leading to the wall and yes, there is a narrow gate made of slender iron bars. Could it be? I hardly dare to hope. But when I turn the round iron knob of handle and push, the gate opens, easily and silently. I have been allowed to exit the peace garden – as all living people must surely want to do – for I am just passing through. For our place is in life is it not? The teeming seething noise and whirl and pace and footsteps and blaring car horns and sounds of horses’ hooves and whinnying and calls of traders ….but I’m thinking of somewhere else or of some amalgam of places, of Chandni Chowk in old Delhi and Tirana’s Rruga Dibres that leads off Scanderbeg Square and is choked with traffic all the way to the medrasa and then to the junction with the Unaza or ring road, with the vast covered market on the other side of the street.

Rruga Dibres, Tirana

Not the sedate traffic on the road between the Dean Gallery and the Modern Art Gallery, no it’s nothing like that, like my memories of Delhi or Tirana. Once you leave the car park of the Dean Gallery (which is where the slender gate led to) there is even a pedestrian crossing and on the other side, the entrance to the modern art gallery, where you almost trip over half of a man rising from the asphalt path (or sinking into it), a metal man, one of Anthony Gormley’s sculptures, (one of several figures in different parts of the city, some partial figures, some full height). An asphalt path, large grounds, grassy slopes, a water feature, and a good view of the imposing building, the Gallery of Modern Art.

Wandering through the rooms on the ground floor, my favourite painting is one by Gwen John.

courtesy of the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art

I sit for some time in front of the video of photographs of Hokkaido, by Daido Moriyama. It doesn’t matter how busy or bustling life is, however crowded full of buildings and commerce and people and trains and tickets we have to buy to get on trains, we are just passing through.