Friday, January 13, 2012

Surprise! Things change.

The waters of Nakhodka Port were the black of death, non life, Styx, some anti-life force, when I first saw them.  The water rippled sluggishly, weighted down with oil and rubbish and jetsam.  An arc of settlement around the harbour showed faded peeling pastel stucco, as the revolution, or Stalin, proscribed in its destructive path across eastern Russia.
What changes this to the photo above, which I would once have thought to be a fanciful dream?
Relinquishing fear?
Capiltalism seeing and exploiting an opportunity?
Ecological enlightenment?
All of the above?
None of the above: just the force of history?

4 comments:

Sannah said...

The picture looks a far cry from your description. You don't happen to have an old photo from your visit?

perhaps they got rid of the geese :P

Elephant's Child said...

You are obviously much more familiar with the area than I am. What do you think? And how nice to see changes for the better.

Frances said...

I assumed that my camera was broken, Sannah, because all my Russian photos came out black. Oddly, the camera came back to life in England.
If they got rid of geese, perhaps they could have replaced them with swans. A Russian on board who had lived in Tokyo for some years as some kind of something, told us that there were 2 black swans on the Tokyo palace moat, and that black swans existed only in Siberia.
As I knew that these swans were a gift of the Aust government, and are, of course native to WA, I mildly disagreed. Meeting his implacable, hostile, cold disagreement, I backed down and agreed that I was mistaken.
I am not proud of this.

Frances said...

Elephant's Child: I really have no idea, but I assume that profit must have come into it. Not a bad thing, if so.
For all I know tho, the photo could be photoshopped.