from Jeremy H If you could actually see the quiet curling fall of Skylab, the triumphant bending line of Lindbergh, the erasure and curve of Earheart , would these lines (and ghosts) tell of something or just be shapes of something best left to an unfinished memory and not of maps? What is that particular trajectory of failing? It reminds one of that unfortunate rare condition where the person can never forget. All is data, collecting and compiling, slivers, increments,cold, integers in the face of questions, mystery and the poem written by an incompletion. To truly, absolutely know anything maybe is to strangle it with its own measure, paths in the sky as much as a loved one's face or one's own reflection.
'Flight Paths' is a networked novel, created on and through the internet, open to contributions from anyone, anywhere. Created and curated by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph, 'Flight Paths' uses stories, texts, videos, photos, sounds, and animations to tell the story of Yacub, the man who fell from the sky, and Harriet, the woman who witnesses his fall. It's a tale of refugees and migrants, consumers and cities, the desperate journey of one man and the bored isolation of one woman. Help us fill the gaps and join the dots by contributing to 'Flight Paths'.
from Jeremy H Cauterized. That is what the odd thing was. After enough time it all had cauterized and was as though there only a vague sense that anything had been torn away when I left. As a kid I cut my thumb cutting watermelons. I still have a half moon shaped scar that is a faint sliver. It is the only thing that remains from not just the deep cut, but the moment and any memory at all. I am sure that my short term and long term memory would have cleaned house on that whole thing years ago, I mean how many times do young boys injure themselves playing? how could it be any kind of sepia tone or tragedy? throwaway.. But a physical memory remains on my skin. A little curve. Los Angeles has no arc from the cut of my flying back and forth , or of the drive with dad to San Francisco to finally go away to school. Why should it? Oscar Wilde once declared his "genius" at a border. When I heard that in a lit class it saddened me. At first it was at the sheer pretension from a writer I thought was good, then it was from such a sense of presence. Too much of a good thing is always bad. But I always feel like a sneeze at best, a spray of mist from a bottle, always have. I just want to have some place, some kind of presence. Now it is only as a visitor in a new city as a tourist. What will come when I graduate? Will it be that feeling on the plane, of being a collection of information with no place, but now on the ground as well? Or will it just be a series of those sneezes, a city and people and me just drifting through somewhere....
Storie Migranti ( http://193.204.255.27/~migranti/spip.php?rubrique28 ) is an archive of migration stories, which tracks the history of our present through migrants’ stories.
from Simon Perril not a moment sooner, my cloud this is real time with the aspic to prove it Hotel & Golf Complex Oakington Barracks Immigration Reception Centre driving through a fractal landscape hedge-shaped bets: a ghost coast lining the outskirts of silicon fen. wthin this tucked hem complex weapons harness ancient magnetism: draw fire from their pen accommodating fear houses locked horns spark contemporary demonology the hammer of statecraft the right-handed script all too legible Valhalla I am coming from Hearing is Itself Suddenly a Kind of Singing, Salt, 2004 If you would like to comment on this poem, go to http://flightpaths.net/bb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15
For today, if you like, I'll be a girl. I'll have two hands for you, and, let me see, I'll have brown hair, long hair that isn't brushed and flicks into my eyes unless I hold my head to the side. If it makes you happy then I'll be seventeen years old. I will wear icewashed jeans; I'll carry a windproof lighter, which I stole. I'll even have a name if you want. Why not call me Sarah. I'm not changing my eyes though; I'm keeping those. Yesterday, and the day before that, I was a magpie, turning on thermals like a black and white kite in air. My mind was small and sharp as a craftknife tip, and red. When I spread my feathers, I could scribble poems in the air, so clever and so sad that the people in the market didn't know that I was there. Before you made me sit and talk to you, before these pills, I was nothing but a pair of wings in the sky. Before today I was quick as silver, and I knew the secret things that hide among the city's pieces. When I was a bird, I was cunning and magic, and a mystery to the world. Before you gave me a blanket to wear, I was narrow like a dart; I could throw myself at people's heads, and spin away at the very last moment and vanish. From the top of the town hall clock, the world is flat and hardly there. The sky is a landscape, huge, invisible, made of light and music, with great empty cathedrals and mountain ranges. I knocked my head on an outcrop of nothing, smacked against the gusting morning, and I fell. If you want, we can pretend that I'm a girl, just until my wings are mended. from Padrika Tarrant, March 2008 Go to http://www.netvibes.com/flightpaths#Forums to leave a comment.
Are you bothered? - OxfamGreatBritain [http://www.youtube.com/user/OxfamGreatBritain] Asylum seekers tell their stories - The Independent Asylum Commission and Human Rights TV via BBC News Online [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7314708.stm] Boeing 777 landing at Heathrow - sunilr007 [http://www.youtube.com/user/sunilr007] Don't Hate Me Because I'm An Asylum Seeker - lafamfilms [http://www.youtube.com/user/lafamfilms] Duty Free - Lebusque [http://www.lebusque.com] End destitution of refused asylum seekers in the UK - HumanTV [http://www.youtube.com/user/HumanTV] Falling Animation - Chris Joseph [http://www.chrisjoseph.org] Global Flight Paths - gletham [http://www.youtube.com/user/gletham] In The Flight Path - travelinlibrarian [http://www.youtube.com/user/travelinlibrarian] Seatbelt - Sarah Atkinson Sound Up - Lebusque [http://www.lebusque.com], NOISE.INC [http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/usersViewSingle.php?id=49629], Chris Joseph [http://www.chrisjoseph.org] Sainsbury's Richmond, 25/3/2008 - Chris Joseph [http://www.chrisjoseph.org] Words - Chris Joseph [http://www.chrisjoseph.org]
For the second year running, New Generation presents Refuge in films 2008, a film festival dedicated to raise awareness about refugees and migrants issues. Entirely developed by a group of young refugees, the festival is giving the voice to young people, and will address issues of representation of refugees and migrants in the film industry. Refuge in Films 2008 will be a space of celebration contributing to a more tolerant society. The festival is being curated by young people from different back grounds; who have been meeting every fortnight to watch the films, in these meetings, they are developing their criteria by discussing the films from different perspectives, and in the next couple of weeks the programme will be ready. In addition, Refuge in films has also developed a Film Challenge in partnership WORLDwrite and Grain Media; young people have been producing 3 to 5 minutes short films to be shown during the festival. Refuge in Films 2008 will have a preview night, where a Latin American Film to be chosen will be shown on Casa Latino Americana in Kilburn, on the 19th of June. The grand opening of Refuge in Films 2008 will take place on Friday the 20th of June at a venue yet to be confirmed, with a reception and the screening of the film: "Sling Shot Hip Hop" by Jackie Salloum (2008), which was official selection for the Sundance Film festival 2008. The film follows the life of young hip hop artists from Palestine. During Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd June, Refuge in films will present a programme of films about Immigration and refuge at the BFI, and will also organize different visual workshops for young people at the Delegate Centre BFI. On Saturday the 21st at 4 pm we are presenting a film yet to be chosen, on the Tricycle theatre in Kilburn. On Sunday 22nd at 16:00 we are screening "The Lighthouse" By Maria Saakyan 2005, (London film festival 2007). This screening will be part of the programme of the BFI for June. Date: JUNE 20-23 2008 Venues: BFI: South bank, Belvedere Road, South Bank, Waterloo, London SE1 8XT Tricycle: 269 KILBURN HIGH ROAD, NW6 7JR, Kilburn Casa Latinoamericana: Priory House, Kingsgate Place, NW6 4TA, Kilburn
from Jeremy J.H. A jet just passed over my head, perfectly bisecting 3 ragged old vapor trails between some wreck ugly thin cirrus anvil cloud husks beheaded from yesterday's thunderstorms down in Mexico somewhere . This little bit of urine colored woozy geometry mixed in with a near transparent orange gauze of smoke from a fire near the ocean is depressing. The lines and clouds are a vaporous muck, a junk drawer, a skyward projection of the food wrappers and crushed newspaper pages that press into the dull grids of fences during the hot winds here. The sun is gleaming briefly off of the plane , now off to the east and shrinking;erasing in view into smaller and smaller versions of what passed overhead, almost gone.
from Jeremy J.H. It was during 5th period honors history. Our teacher Mr Hale was usually a jolly kumquat of a man with too tight pants, a penchant for mismatched socks and a blob of mayo on the corner of his lip from lunch that was a pale island rising whenever he laughed at his own jokes. He was clearly distressed. The only time before that he had seemed so awkwardly discombobulated was when he found a piece of lettuce had fallen into his pocket and,flecked with mustard, was waving along as he spoke like a hand. He paced awkwardly for a few moments by his wooden desk then 2 students came in with a television and helped him plug it in. A pale worm-like cloud was descending in a deep blue sky. It was on every channel. The cloud was red then gray until one small lonely bit spun in close ups for what seemed like forever. We had no idea what was going on. Until it cut to people. It was the shuttle. It had exploded. The trail slowly faded as it fell. My seat felt cold against me as it replayed.
from Kate's blog Sitting at my desk in my new office for the first time, I see that I have a great view of the sky. I wasn’t expecting this. It reminds me of when we first moved to this house; we were amazed by the extraordinary wide open sky vistas our garden afforded. Twelve years on, the trees have grown up to obscure the sky-view in that direction. But now I find my new office has re-oriented me, giving me a whole new view: and there it is once again, the sky.
from Jeremy J.H. I remember leaving SFO after my first year away from home and that moment when I no longer could see the waving of my new room mates any more, only the geometry of collective windowglass and then whole buildings along the pavement as the wheels left the ground. Los Angeles had already become a blur of incomplete files rubbed soft months before: faces unfinished,streets with blanks for foilage, distance veined within it all. The plane was airborne and for an hour it was as though there was no city, no sense of connection, no tether and it was a sort of aware amnesia. I know the concepts, the bits and names, but the world for an hour was the flight path, strangers, a soda and peanuts and me. The world to me at 22 was my weight on the seat, the angle of my body, random thoughts and a sense of a line being invisibly drawn between two fictions, elaborate incomplete narratives. It was very unnerving and felt infinite for a time. I landed at Burbank and saw my father in the terminal, his face sun burned and tired and a skin broke somehow. Some details began to fill slowly and this continued on as we drove in the air conditioning of his car, tributaries of detail, mostly mundane as San Francisco felt like a sketch skeletal and far far off. A plane flew past as we got on the freeway and painted a thin line of ice crystals behind on its way to somewhere. I was home. At least for now.
The central valley is passing below, a dull elongated brown classroom topographical map looking stretch of slight ripples amongst a seemingly endless flat plain. 23 minutes have gone by. This I know for sure. 23 minutes of a 55 minute flight. A bag of peanuts sags to one side on my flat little white tray table. I am not hungry. My father has already smoothed a bit in my memory, little blank spots as to parts of his hair and chin. Yesterday we were all swimming in the kidney shaped pool and San Francisco and college were Iceland from that pool's edge, ice sheets of the poles from the diving board and the music from the radio. The water was so crystalline,a biting hint of chlorine in the nostrils but such a wondrous chaos of activity breaking along the ripples on the surface. The scent of the chicken wings dad was cooking with alternating splashes of beer and Italian dressing on the heat of the grill wafted across the water in one of those moments so detailed, so hyper-real as to be almost unbearable in its rich details. I am now probably somewhere south of Fresno and it feels like the universe is only a terrarium made of the metal of this plane. I feel like I could take all those faces,voices,sounds,odors and nearby streets and just smear them together into some kind of feeble peanut butter. Both Cities too. The plane is veering right a bit, my right calf is cramping, my lips are dry, the man across the aisle looks just like Bela Lugosi. These things I understand.
from Jeremy H Cauterize