Monday, July 20, 2009

North Jersey

North Jersey, as in New Jersey, not the Channel Islands, has a certain charm, as the apparent graveyard for aging tractor-trailers and repository for dumpsters, juxtaposed against green (at least in the summer) marshland. Graffiti is no small part of the aesthetic, a personal favorite being DETOX THE GHETTO, painted on an overpass's concrete abutment. Not to mention SAPIENS.
The color scheme is pleasing, ordinarily rust brown (the kind that results from actual oxidation) against the aforementioned greenery against a typically gray sky (which could be smokestack-related). And there's wildlife, or at least a mutt that sits outside of a warehouse door (rusted aluminum) and a forlorn pony who seems to have more or less adjusted to his ironbound sanctuary.
Occasionally the wetlands yield the concentric circles indicative of a rising fish. Kind of like life on Mars.
The vista can simultaneously yield ostensibly lush growth; airplanes; a cellphone tower; water; trucks; asphalt; billboards; unidentifiable, twisted, rusted-out heaps; power lines; barbed wires; railroad tracks; windowless buildings; pillars supporting invisible structures; and piles and piles and piles of concrete. This stretch of the so-called Northeast Corridor must be the concrete-slab capital of the world. Who is responsible for this shit?
No matter; with features so varied, only Yellowstone offers as much diversity.

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