Virginia Verran By Andrew Mania Dear Virginia I am on the train thinking about your work and fumbling for words
on my iphone as I peer out of the window at the landscape whizzing past and can’t help thinking that time is running
out. Anxious to write something tangible my procrastination led me to two stories
in the news today that make me think of your concerns. A 5 tonne NASA satellite has fallen out of it's orbit and is hurtling
towards earth and is expected to land somewhere this week, where exactly it is going to land is not known yet... the bunker
that is your studio might well be a safe haven. Meanwhile less alarmingly from The International Space Station, a Soyuz space
capsule with two astronauts has safely landed in Kazakhstan. The video on the news showed it gracefully land surrounded by
helicopters with its ring patterned parachute floating to earth. It was somehow visually reminiscent of a drawing of yours
that I remember. Tangentially these events also made me think of that lucky boy in Essen Germany who 2 years ago was struck
by a meteorite whilst out walking. I wonder if he has any supernatural powers now. Returning to your drawings I have been
writing words that come to mind as I trundle through the countryside, which may or may not be of relevance… celestial cartography vs astrological map pins… momentum and velocity,
chain reaction… radial puncture, Doodlebug whirring… discus, archers, javelins and shields…
cross-wires and instruments of precision… catapulted nets, veils of mathematical pins and needles… tungsten filament,
fizz… kite menace… topsy turvy hovering croquet hoops… Zeppelin buzz… shuttlecock ascending… nerve gas… HG
Wells's War of the Worlds… reconnaissance, propellors, artillery… stretching-contracting… aerodrome, testing
ground, whiplash forces, fighter jet maneoevres, defensive spiral, rolling scissors, pursuit curves, projectile-recoil,
munitions, uncertainty principle... searchlights, firing ranges, permissive pathway, camera obscura, chivalric
flags and jousting instructions, aeronautical display, jockey shirts, radar, colliding particles, physics, elusive fusions,
quantum clocks, flags flutter, gyroscopes, prism radiants… collapsing perspective, telegraph wires, telegrams dot dot
dot, morse code, seismic reverberations, geodesics, floating orbits, musical kinetics, Einsteins fluff, Higgs Boson particle,
acupuncture, multidimensional, big bang synesthesia… pricks, punctures, projectiles, darts, flux and strata…
micro-macro, roving and tethered balloons… gyrating satellites , tectonic battlefield, probing searchlight… telekinesis,
billowing tarpaulins, cranking orrieries and meridians… torpedo jettison, scree and craters… exponential dot dot
dot…"
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