12) Decay

Biomass can be very beautiful. Fallen wood eaten by mushrooms, and inhabited by rare black bugs, their antennas surprisingly long; leaves rotting away on the ground, spreading the rot to other plants, wadded mats of decaying vegetation, rain pouring on it. Between water and land it is the best, in marshy states, with the occasional bubbling gases, or shimmering fog, patterns of algae, squashy mud, crustaceous things, slugs and numerous amphibious creatures doing long immersions, sliming their way slowly and alive as ever. It takes a while to enjoy being surrounded by decay, or it doesn’t take any time to shed biases of culture or history or habits of properness that are blind to the glowing of the real. Decay encompasses the sanctioned aesthetic devices of the sublime and the horrific.

The photograph, taken by Harry Hampel in 1991, shows the M-Bahn levitating into Tiergarten; to the right the ruins of the Hotel Esplanade are taken over by the forest, while the Death Strip stretches in the distance.

Biomass can be very beautiful. Fallen wood eaten by mushrooms, and inhabited by rare black bugs, their antennas surprisingly long; leaves rotting away on the ground, spreading the rot to other plants, wadded mats of decaying vegetation, rain pouring on it. Between water and land it is the best, in marshy states, with the occasional bubbling gases, or shimmering fog, patterns of algae, squashy mud, crustaceous things, slugs and numerous amphibious creatures doing long immersions, sliming their way slowly and alive as ever. It takes a while to enjoy being surrounded by decay, or it doesn’t take any time to shed biases of culture or history or habits of properness that are blind to the glowing of the real. Decay encompasses the sanctioned aesthetic devices of the sublime and the horrific.

The photograph, taken by Harry Hampel in 1991, shows the M-Bahn levitating into Tiergarten; to the right the ruins of the Hotel Esplanade are taken over by the forest, while the Death Strip stretches in the distance.