The Whirling Woman in Black

Several weeks after the closure of the last major film studio theme park, I encountered for the first time the prime product of the growth industry of the last two decades - disaster tourism. The theme park sites in Orlando, Los Angeles and Paris had suffered many years of decline despite new attractions being opened to reproduce the seemingly endless public appetite for re-living the greatest disasters of our era. The mock Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that had been built in Florida brought in less than 5% of the income of the real thing, despite the daily shows of earthquake, tsunami and hydrogen explosions that rocked the Everglades and annoyed the somnolent crocodiles. The real thing in Japan was much more potent to the imaginations of the global tourists who flew in from all over the world. The addition of the long closed Kennedy Space Center to the theme park empire and the recreations of the 1986 Challenger disaster and the explosive failure of the USA’s return to manned flight brought in many times the revenue of the major rides and attractions of the now defunct theme parks..

With this in mind I found myself at the Flood Disaster Experience near the region of what used to be called The Netherlands, before the sea overwhelmed the man made polders and inundated the seawater pumps. With the first country in the world to be sunk off the map, a whole culture and language had disappeared with it, the refugees of this country that were spread to all corners of the globe readily forgetting their native language with the impulse to trade at maximum efficiency.

I was part of a small group of people to attend the first week’s performances of the extreme flooding hydrodynamics experience. After two hours of promotional videos and technographic presentations, we were prepared for the highlight of the visit, a live recreation of the great breach of the Afsluitdijk. A scale recreation of the Netherlands had been created in a large expanse of flat land, and part of the experience was to get as close to the breach as possible by standing on large floating canvas-like material surfaces on top of the water. This way we could appreciate the complex and impressive hydrodynamic effects produced by this historical disaster.

The woman in charge of the demonstration distributed coloured mackintoshes - each one of us had a slightly different task to perform, a different part of the disaster to monitor. Later on we would debrief and share our experiences and observations. This debrief would be recorded on video and after being intercut with the recreated disaster footage, would be purchasable later on as a souvenir. I donned a yellow mac, to indicate that I would be stood some distance from the breach of the dam or dyke, a number of the group members wore red to monitor the moment the wall of water hit land, and a woman was given a black waterproof and asked to monitor the breach itself.

The woman controller stood back under a tree and ordered the simulation operative to start the show by unleashing the pent up risen seawaters behind the dyke. Almost immediately I felt a pulse under my feet as a shock-wave propagated forwards away from the breach. A jolt like a heartbeat under the water. I remained easily upright as the material surface I was standing on was large and sufficiently inflexible to provide a safe and firm footing. I watched as a wall of water surged forwards away from the dyke towards the scaled coastline, model trains and cars moving in the distance to indicate the normalcy of life on that fateful day when years of rising sea levels finally exposed a catastrophic manufacturing defect in the dyke’s construction. However as the water approached the model coastline and the group members in their red outfits, a hydraulic jump formed bringing the wall of water to a standstill. The instructor beckoned to the red team to come closer to the wall, knowing that the hydraulic jump at this point of the simulation would be stable for some time, the unique subsea topology of the IJsselmeer producing this impressive effect.

As more water poured through the breach in the damn, the hydraulic wall remained stable, increasing in size and I felt the platform I was stood on rising up on the increasing water levels. The red group stared in awe as the wall of water rose over 10 metres, like the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus.

Out of the corner of my eye, however, I noticed that an intense whirlpool was starting to form near the dyke’s breach. The woman in the black raincoat raised her hands in delight, as if she was conjuring up this eddy herself. I shouted to the group members in red who were now some distance below those of us above the hydraulic jump, trying to direct their attention to the developing malestrom. However they remained transfixed by the increasing size of the wall of water, dancing a merry jig hand in hand with evident joy.

I turned to look at the instructor. Seeing her reaction was calm and positive, I surmised this was all part of the script.

By now a second hydraulic jump was forming near the developing whirlpool, the limitless quantity of the ersatz North Sea providing a continuous supply of hydraulic energy. As the whirlpool gathered momentum and power I watched as the woman in black stepped onto the edge of the spinning water, entranced and hypnotized by the swiftly swirling waters. Sharing a good deal of her entrancement and delight, I remained at my place on the now faster rising canvas. Somehow by the uplifting flow of the clear water and the gyroscopic effects of the rotating cataract, the woman in black remained stable and upright, stood up on the whirling rim of water. With a wild and vivid expression on her face, the woman in black spun round and round on the rim of the whirlpool, black mackintosh flailing behind her, the lacework of her black dress free and flapping behind her in the wind, her black hair released and streaming around and around, about once per second. Instinctively, it seemed, she started dancing on her way around the edge, hands whirling and rotating in a fusion of flamenco, bollywood and belly dancing.

By now the instructor had left her tree, and was watching with some concern. Evidently there had been a departure from the script. The group members in red had stopped their jig and were now transfixed by the insane sight of the woman in black, rotating and gyrating in an expanding circle of water, a gesticulating black form moving faster and faster around the whirlpool.

The eddy deepened and moved closer to the second hydraulic jump that had formed nearer the compromised dyke. As the whirlpool approached the watery precipice, the edge of the spinning water bulged out of the hydraulic wall like the bowl of a wine glass, the conical base of the cup forming on the edge of the water wall, a spinning column of water below mimicking the stem of a wine glass. The upward pressure at the rim of the whirlpool broke down as the complex hydraulics reset themselves around the new structure. With this reconfiguration the woman in black slowly sank into the edge of the bowl of whirling water until she was below the level of the top of the whirlpool. Oblivious she continued her dance, faster and faster around the eddy. Now the coat, her clothes and her hair flowed in waves behind her as she continued her hand dance, visible though the edge of the water wall, around and around, now spinning past twice a second. The woman in black formed a bizarre moving form seen through the clear water as if through glass.

Clearly concerned now for the woman in black, the instructor instinctively shouted out to her to step out of the whirlpool. Suddenly the spell of the dance was broken and the woman in black’s trance dropped instantly. Panicked at finding herself deep in the vortex, she starting to try to turn, legs and arms flailing madly. She opened her mouth to scream but a silent bubble of air burst out. Her hands and legs broke through the edge of the water and air was sucked in around her, the water writhing and foaming in response to the mad spasmic jerkings of the woman’s arms and legs. As if ensconced in a chrysalis, she was surrounded by a tube of bubbles and foam, still spinning endlessly round the vortex.

The break in the edge of the water wall by the movement of the woman in black’s arms and legs sent ripples of instability up and down the hydraulic wall, and the surface began to break down. With a sickening whoosh the woman in black found herself on an ejection trajectory in the fast collapsing vortex, her flailing body emerging from the vertical water sheet and falling with some speed towards the hard floor that had opened up with the merging of the two hydraulic steps, now both oscillating with impending instability. I caught a glimpse of the hard ground exposed below the disintegrating wine glass shape and saw the water turn red.

Without thinking I took hold of the instructor, moved her back to the tree and comforted her as she sobbed. Looking over her shoulder I could see the red-dressed group members running to safety before the fast collapsing hydraulic wall. The model coast began its inondation, a tsunami picking up the model cars and trains and pushing them on, over the flat model landscape.

On the Death of Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong, the first man to step onto another celestial body, died at the age of 82 on the 25^th of August 2012. The obituaries talked about this historic, self-effacing man in their usual pre-written ways. At his burial the fact that the day coincided with the second full (and therefore “blue”) moon on the same month was mentioned. By the time I am writing this paragraph in early September 2012, and endless F5ing of the newspaper websites has consigned his story to the archives and life goes on as before, the moon landings of the late 60s and early 70s a strange historical oddity.

The Apollo program ended in December 1972. I have a memory of watching a moon landing live in the early 70s. Hard to say if it was the last one, which was reputedly not televised as people had got bored already with blurry images in black and white of these strange chubby dolls bouncing around a barren landscape as if on elastic. I am too young to recall the Apollo 11 landing of Amstrong and Aldrin, even if I was there.

I often wonder how the present young generation see the moon landings. As the youngest man to have walked on the moon was born in 1935 (Charles Duke?), the moon shots were stuff of their grandparents’ generation, just as for me the Second World War was of my grandparents’ time.

Since the last Apollo flight, man has been restricted to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and somehow this is less thrilling than it should be. Perhaps it is because apart from repairing orbital telescopes, the LEO missions are of limited value. Perhaps it is because the altitude of the International Space Station (ISS) is between 330km and 410km, something like the distance between Brussels and London.

The dream of spaceflight has failed and I wonder why? At the death of Neil Armstrong I looked up a quote from the late author J.G. Ballard:

[I]n 1969, Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon and became, I thought, the only human being from our millennium who would be remembered in 50,000 years' time. But after those first triumphs something began to go wrong. [The] great vision of galactic exploration had begun to fade. The suspicion dawned that outer space might be - dare one say it - boring. Having expended all these billions of dollars on getting to the Moon, we found on our arrival that there wasn't very much to do there. [It was] the most hostile environment ever encountered. Besides, absolute zero was not a temperature at which anything very interesting ever happened. We began to realise that the most fascinating planet in the universe, and by far the strangest, was the one that the astronauts had left behind them. (J. G. Ballard, Observer 22 Dec 1996)

In a relatively short period of time, man has gone from cave dwelling hunter-gatherer to agricultural settler, to technological city dweller sending men to the stars. It’s an incredible feat in objective terms. But somehow our imaginations don’t play ball. Maybe Ballard is right that space in reality is boring – perhaps our ideas and dreams of science fiction and space travel are so far beyond our capability that we are deeply disappointed by the reality.

Ballard suggests that space travel offends our sense of evolutionary superiority, as it infantilises us in terms of our biological prowess in walking, running – all the things that gravity gives us.

But what if there had been a disaster in space? This question was floated by the Chilean surrealist artist Matta in 1966:

DIS-ASTRONAUTE

Disaster in space: an astronaut is dead. But is he dead? Closed in a perfect capsule, his body is intact. Is he alive? His voice is not heard by man, his thought is still. All that one knows is that his body – dead? alive? – turns in space around the earth at enormous speed. On a clear night, a luminous point crosses the sky from one horizon to the other. Sailors check their course against that point; on silent islands mothers show the miracle to their children: the miracle of something – a man – that moves amongst the stars and is distinguished from them by movement. He has a name. Russian? American? A common name, a sound like the sound of a star’s name, but a man’s name. Dead? Alive?

Perhaps we will never hear of such a thing, perhaps a disaster in space will never occur. But what would occur if it should occur? Perhaps nothing more than what is written in this brief hypothetical account. Or perhaps everything in the world would change because man could not support the idea of a perfect cadaver or a live man without voice and without thought turning in space, beyond contact and beyond understanding. But how many perfect cadavers and live men without voice and without thought surround us every day on earth? Why must we await – and fear – a disaster in space, in order to become aware of our world?

MATTA, Paris 1966

A Ballard character in The Atrocity Exhibition misquotes the last line as, "a disaster in space in order to understand our own time?"

There have been several disasters with the space program. From NASA there was the Apollo 1 fire during testing that killed Grissom, White, and Chaffee. This was a disaster on the ground. There were two fatal disasters with the Space Shuttle program, Challenger at launch in 1986 and Colombia during re-entry in 2003. In these cases the bodies of the brave astronauts fell to earth.

But what if Armstrong had crashed the Eagle module as he landed it manually on the moon’s surface in 1969? What if the explosion on Apollo 13 on its way to the moon had been fatal and the crew of Lovell, Swigert and Haise had crashed into the moon or ended up as an orbiting tomb around the moon? If these disasters had taken place, each time we looked at the moon we would think of the cadavers of these men in their cold airless coffins. Every clear night as the moon shone down we would feel the bodies of these pioneering men and wonder at their death. We would dream about going to the moon to see their final resting places, maybe talk with their ghosts.

If men had died on the moon, our concepts of time and space would have changed, I really believe that. The moon would have become an emotionally charged place and I am convinced we would have had a moon base by now.

The preserved and desiccated remains of these men would have spurred humanity on to deeper understandings.

In a November 16, 2009 editorial, The New York Times opined:

[T]here’s something terribly wistful about these photographs of the Apollo landing sites. The detail is such that if Neil Armstrong were walking there now, we could make him out, make out his footsteps even, like the astronaut footpath clearly visible in the photos of the Apollo 14 site. Perhaps the wistfulness is caused by the sense of simple grandeur in those Apollo missions. Perhaps, too, it’s a reminder of the risk we all felt after the Eagle had landed – the possibility that it might be unable to lift off again and the astronauts would be stranded on the Moon. But it may also be that a photograph like this one is as close as we’re able to come to looking directly back into the human past.

"We went to explore the Moon, and in fact discovered the Earth." –Eugene Cernan

The original video tapes of the Apollo 11 mission are believed to have been wiped. What a comment…

Kerstmis in Engeland

In Engeland gaat het kerstfeest een beetje anders dan in België. Bijvoorbeeld, we vieren niet Sint Niklaas. Kinderen krijgen geen cadeautjes op 6 december en niemand kent Zwarte Piet. Engelse kinderen krijgen hun cadeautjes op kerstochtend, 25 december.

In België wordt de grootste familiemaaltijd op 24 december ‘s avonds gevierd, maar in Engeland is deze avond gewoonlijk om naar jouw familie te rijden.  

De grootste kerstmaaltijd wordt in Engeland op 25 december s’ middags gegeten. Het is de belangrijkste maaltijd omdat je die met jouw familie viert.

Een gewoonte en traditionele kerstschotel is geroosterde kalkoen met aardappelen, wortelen, brusselse spruiten, hesp en andere lekker eten. Na de hoofdschotel eet je een zoet nagerecht.

Daarna mag je niet in slaap vallen omdat je om 3 uur 's middags naar de toespraak van de koningin moet kijken! De toespraak van de koningin is een heel belangrijke traditie.

In Engeland is kerstmis een heel belangrijk familiefeest zoals in België, maar het rooster is een beetje veranderd.

Common Sense and Clothes Drying

We are all brought up with ideas learned from our parents and from society - things that are held to be true, are common sense. When these ideas are totally wrong it is always an uphill struggle to try and convince people of the failure of common wisdom.

At the moment it is mid-March and it is snowing. Because of this fact, I am doing as much laundry as I can. What? Are you crazy? Drying clothes in sub-zero temperatures! The best day for drying clothes is when it is baking hot, as hot as possible!

Er, no.

Ever since I put thermometers around my apartment, I've also been watching the humidity levels - the humidity measurements of these electronic thermometers was something I had no interest in previously. However, logic tells me the lower the humidity the faster clothes will dry. And guess what, when it is freezing outside, inside the heating is on and the humidity levels in my apartment at 25% are drier than the Atacama Desert. So clothes dry in a couple of hours! When it's mid summer and hot, the humidity here is over 50%, and clothes often take a couple of days to dry...

So when the snow falls, I get as much clothes washing done as possible. Illogical heh?