URBAN PORTRAIT #1: Muizenberg Station, Planet Earth, 2010

For some or other reason I find myself standing around the train station one late summer evening. its dark already, and an enchanting piece of urbanity reveals its profile to my appreciating eye. For a man raised on multilayered metropolitan landscapes this is but an unforeseen delight. I’m standing on the platform, above me firmly sits an Edwardian era clock-tower, weathered by the relentless ocean winds but maintaining its self-important stature over the coastal station. Its clock face lit up to reveal an incorrect time, it serves as a cosmic reminder of our emphasis on time despite its banality in the greater scheme of things. Beyond the station the receding tracks disappear round a bend that is intercepted with a level crossing. Along the tracks illuminated bushes set the stage for a thousand bergie folk tales narrated in the drunken haze of petrochemical bonfires. Overhead i see the block to which I indentify as my living quarters. Three floors up, 1920s Style and painted an unintentionally melancholic tone of sky blue. A window is lit up in the encroaching nightfall. For a second the existence of some wretched soul is noted, but as my perspective adjusts to incorporate the larger landscape, they become a small part of the collective sorrow of our species. Then towering over everything stands the behemoth of Muizenberg, the Cinnabar, a 16 floor modernist monstrosity punctuating the otherwise old-world setting. Just then a brooding rattle precipitates the arrival of an incoming express train. The sleek beast rolls into the station, overhead sparks sizzle off its electric firewires, giving the machine a distinct aura of mechanical malevolence. As the metronomic siren calls its departure and the automatic doors shut as the haggard commuters scurry along the platform, I gaze once more at the Cinnibar and I fondly acknowledge the smorgasbord of varied urbanity that infiltrates even almost forgotten corners of this pre-apocalyptic civilization. I think back to an old Asimov sci-fi book that I had read a coupla years back; The Foundation Trilogy. The strory is set on a planet called Trantor, characterised by its vast urbanity, the entire planet being covered in compacted interanal city structures, not one piece of natural terrain to spare. Children are raised without ever seeing the sun or stars. I picture earth going that way, then the squawk of seagull directs my attention to the ocean behind me and the rising moon over the distant mountains and I realise that isn’t going to happen any time soon.