Cryptic Journeys by Chipka
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Description
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Strange are the ways of cities. Once, I’d wandered in search of tableaus to capture, and in doing so, found something that resembled the city-hidden pathway into the plot of an Andrei Tarkovsky film. I retraced my steps, to see if that pathway remained, to see if the play of sunlight reflected from various painted surfaces might still color drifts and billows of snow. I retraced my steps in order to see if snow remained. I found considerable snow-melt and saw the subtle patterns of a patient and pitiless wind. The city-hidden pathway into The Zone as depicted in Tarkovsky’s film, Stalker remained; it still beckoned with that strange light from many sources. I knew that there were dead and buried train tracks, but I didn’t expect to experience them, profoundly, as they vanished into the light at the end of the viaduct, and—as I imagined—into The Zone. I didn’t expect the sight of dead train tracks to evoke the memory of journeys by train, especially the long and wordless visual meditation that takes up a substantial amount of narrative space in Tarkovsky’s film. Though I was thinking of train sounds, I heard the haunting ambience of Eduard Artimiev’s “Meditation” weaving its way through my thoughts.
As with my previous visit, I expected to meet a stalker, or at least a guy who looked like the late actor, Alexander Kaidanovsky. I can’t say that I wanted to meet a stalker and pay him to lead me into The Zone in search of the Room. Such an undertaking is not to be taken lightly, after all, and I was in no mental shape to explore and survive the psychological, spiritual, and physical rigors of The Zone or the room at its core; I’d just left work, and was not up to the challenge of philosophical conversations with a man who found employment in the act of leading people into a violation of reality. I did, however, think of friends: of Vadik (and his occasional and odd, photographically-intense forays into Ukrainian forests) and Victor-3, “Little Victor” whose abilities as a stalker lead him (and those around him) into books and film-scores. I thought of Slavek, who stalked all the way from the Czech Republic to a “miniature flat” in London, and of Victor-Prime (not to be confused with Victors 2 – 4) whose gift for stalking leads him into the domain of visual art and occasional voice-over work in the city of Khabarovsk: not surprising, since he was born there, and finds that it has better trees and smaller crowds than Moscow.) I suspect I might have been able to stalk my way into the unreal nation of Agara…but there were no Agaran voices to follow, at the moment. I satisfied myself with thoughts of friends from other cities, with names like Praha and Kiev, Smolensk and Khabarovsk, though I lingered for a bit and dared to follow the train tracks until they vanished beneath dirty snow tinged Martian Red by strange, bent sunlight.
I will visit a particular viaduct again, with a new camera, no less. By then, the snow will be gone, the dead train tracks will be naked to the eye…and maybe, just maybe, something may reveal itself in the light at the end of the viaduct. The destinations of long-vanished trains may still exist, though trains themselves no longer go there. Who knows? There are stories, and I’m sure that eventually, I’ll stalk my way into one of them. Until then: here’s a picture.
As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.
Comments (11)
Cyve
Fantastic view and capture .
jmb007
jolie
MrsRatbag
I love the ruddy rich lead-in to the white unknown...a really splendid image!
Wolfenshire
The image is apocalyptic.
durleybeachbum
SO strange!
helanker
A really odd path as there is only one rail. Oh that must be snow on the right one LOL! A very mysterious Picture. Beautiful too.
kgb224
Superb capture my friend. God bless.
Faemike55
Great capture and narrative Excellent work
anahata.c
I'm only doing one image in a handful of galleries this morning, but your last 3 have been deep visions of what you were capturing, and two of them---this and the black and white photo, 2 images hence---truly feel like invitations to the "зона". (If that doesn't show in russian letters, it's supposed to spell "zona"---you just can't speak of Tarkovsky without using a russian word once in a while.) (Does RR exhibit foreign alphabets? I assume so. I've seen Japanese and Greek every so often...) I remember this place, I assume it's the same as the one you posted a little while back. And I'm amazed there's snow there at all...but when one considers how much snow was there before, it's not surprising. What's left, now, half buries the tracks, leaving them looking almost more suited to the journey than they were before. And your light is blasting and obliterating, beyond the tracks, intimating some extraordinary transformation, if we only follow them. (Who knew that was possible in Chicago? If someone tells me Rahm Emanuel had something to do with this, I'll sell all my Tarkovsky's and become a circus barker.) The metal posts on the upper right almost look like goal posts---not to bring football or soccer into this, but rather to imply that those posts intimate something big on the other side. Terrific work with light and dark, and the way you bring out the emergent tracks, and the way those tracks are echoed in the now dirty snow... Yes, I can see how your Eastern European friends both pointed to and lived in the midst of lands where the call to the zone was intense. Everything I've heard about portions of E. Europe sounds like it's filled with those calls. And I can understand how, upon leaving work, you weren't exactly in the mood for a Tarkovskian journey to the Room. One wants to be more alert for such a journey, among other things. Artimiev's music---which is beautiful---is gift enough for such a moment. In fact, it evokes the whole journey. He uses E. European instruments too, even though they're couched in electronic and traditional western instruments. There's a cimbalom in there, with that haunting sound that's so very E. European. (Well, it's one of those incredibly 'eastern european' zithers that sound like nothing else on earth, sounding like the memories of eons of unseen lives mingling right down the alley.) In "Nostalghia," Tarkovsky ends with that man sitting in a huge cathedral, with no roof, and the snow drifting down on top of him, with a village in the background! (Right? Is my memory serving me re that village?). Anyway, it's all inside a roofless cathedral. It's like he lifts up the surfaces of things, and finds ages of lives right underneath their surfaces, and brings them forward, into the light. In Mirror/Zerkalo, I remember a scene near the end where the main female character seems to be in the present, past and future at the same time...she's visiting herself as a child or perhaps as the life after hers---I don't remember the specifics; but, for a moment, whole generations converge in her eyes. There was also the burning barn, which felt inexplicable but was absolutely central to the film. I bring these up because they'e all journeys into the zona, but each one suited to the person who's making the journey at the time... Your characters (in your writing) inhabit such places, and they drift in and out of such worlds, with unencumbered ease. This piece evokes such a meeting between one world and the other. Fitting too, as spring is upon us where two worlds meet and mysteriously trade off...A beautiful haunting red-hot-intense image, and a haunting evocation of the calls round us. And a beautiful evocation of Tarkovsky too, who seems to be your brother...Wonderful upload, Chip.
jendellas
The image & the sound track are haunting. x
mermaid
just wow!