I like car wreckers and scrap metal dealers and large recycling operations. I like landfill sites. I like waste transfer stations and telephone exchanges. I like water plants and pumping sheds. I like electricity substations and high tension lines and the land beneath them. I like railway yards and freight terminals. I like the weeds that grow there. I like the secret places people dump refrigerators and stained mattresses. I like the undersides of overpasses. I like yellow earthmoving machinery and the pressed steel plates put over their cabins at night. I like the bodies of birds caught on barbed wire. I like the smell of diesel exhaust and engine grease and sump oil. I like shipping containers and nights lit by sodium arc. I like the sides of creeks that run through industrial estates. I like brutal utility and elegant simplicity. I like how the earth reclaims everything, the endless cycle unfolding. I like how apparent this process is at the city’s seams.

[crossposted]