Sketches of China 05: The Great Wall

Illustration: Mark Doyle

This is the fifth instalment of Sketches of China, a collaboration between the writer James Kelly and the illustrator Mark Doyle.

The graveyard shift, sitting alone in the candlelight as the clock strikes four, the night wearing on, surrounded by the room’s thick stone walls and the damp smell of the salt air, hearing the lullaby of the waves outside and sitting, key in hand, turning it over again and again, the key to a kingdom that lies in ruin, the barbarians camping outside, their advance checked – for now – by the wall, by that enormous structure built of human sweat and blood, marking out the northern frontier, a border running west from where the mountains meet the sea, tracing an improbable boundary across rocky limestone hills cloaked in rich verdure, joining the dots of torch-lit watchtowers burning in the night, a structure only as strong as its weakest link, plunging over the face of a cliff, down into the fast-flowing waters and foaming narrows of a ravine before resuming on the other side, continuing across the vast expanses of scrub and wilderness, across the steppe, before petering out somewhere far in the west, that tormented figure sitting alone in the candlelit room, the night wearing on, meditating on the territory guarded by that immense structure, only as strong as its weakest part, key in hand, turning it over and over, the wall marking out the space where the heavenly empire dwells, the self-sufficiency and sanctity of one kingdom above all, the barbarians waiting outside, key in hand, over and over again, mulling over the decision as Beijing lies sacked and smouldering, the tortured faces of a father and a lover, meditating on their fate, on the price of revenge, weighing up a choice between the lesser of two evils – treason or an empty throne – and intuiting that the decision is perhaps already made, the candles flickering in the damp salty air, the touch of the metal, a key, the key, the key to a future preordained, destiny – or so it would seem – in the palm of a hand.

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James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. Read more of his work at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.

Mark Doyle is an artist and illustrator working in painting, sculpture, printmaking and digital media. See more of his work at www.markdoyle.org and on Instagram @markdoyleartist.

Sketches of China 04: Beijing by train

Illustration: Mark Doyle

This is the fourth instalment of Sketches of China, a collaboration between the writer James Kelly and the illustrator Mark Doyle.

Speeding across the countryside under sulphur skies, an arrow shot for the city’s heart, the forlorn moan of the electric locomotive thundering along the tracks, cutting across the land, slowing from time to time, stopping at anonymous skylines of half-built tower blocks and cranes that tell of the rapacious pace of urbanisation, the shape of a woman emerging freshly showered onto a balcony in the evening sun as the carriages pull away once again, surveying the scene from the window, the landscape drenched in wan yellow light, the sinuous figures and sun-beaten skin of peasants who till the land, resting for a moment under a drooping tree, the red and white stripes of a chimney stack behind them, a smelter belching out smoke that hangs low in the air above fields of cadmium rice and split melons, the smog lingering over rivers whose fish have long since departed, hanging in wisps above brittle fields, their groundwater sullied, their aquifers depleted, the earth sucked dry, the train reaching the first buildings that announce the metropolis under darkening skies, the forlorn moan of the engine dying out to the creak of the carriages as it slows, snaking unnoticed through shabby suburbs, the buildings growing taller, entombing the land and climbing to touch the sky, the carriages tugging as finally they come to a halt, stepping out onto the concourse, waking into a nightmare, feeling the frenetic pulse of the city as the sun gradually sinks over the fields left far behind, the land slipping into shadow to await the new day, the televised dawn of progress at all costs.

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James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. Read more of his work at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.

Mark Doyle is an artist and illustrator working in painting, sculpture, printmaking and digital media. See more of his work at www.markdoyle.org and on Instagram @markdoyleartist.

Sketches of China 03: River Scene, Qinhuai by Night

Illustration: Mark Doyle

This is the third instalment of Sketches of China, a collaboration between the writer James Kelly and the illustrator Mark Doyle.

The mother river, the artery around which the city’s historic heart once grew, its banks now thronging with crowds, an ancient temple from another time – all but forgotten – standing behind them, the reflections of a neon dragon shimmering on the murky olive waters, couples and families pausing for photographs on the bridge, feigning indifference to the smell of putrid waste hanging in the air, stopping to watch the pleasure boats as they pass below, all lit up in yellows and reds, swallowed by the darkness of an arch from which bats emerge, their wings tracing flights of Brownian motion in the night, crossing the bridge and turning off on the other side, off down a street lined with gift shops, running the gauntlet, avoiding eye contact and playing deaf to the hawkers’ cries as they echo off the walls, finding a moment’s respite from the humidity in the chill gust emerging from a department store before being enveloped again by the muggy air, leaving the water to drip steadily from the air conditioning unit as miles away a chimney belches out coal smoke, turning off down an alley leading to the metro, the street lined with counterfeit goods, the sound of raised voices, a slap ringing out in the night, descending the stairs, the dry click of the carriage doors, sterile, modern, and a lingering question as the train pulls away: the mother river, what will her children become?

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James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. Read more of his work at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.

Mark Doyle is an artist and illustrator working in painting, sculpture, printmaking and digital media. See more of his work at www.markdoyle.org and on Instagram @markdoyleartist.

Sketches of China 02: Cloudburst

Illustration: Mark Doyle

This is the second installment of Sketches of China, a collaboration between the writer James Kelly and the illustrator Mark Doyle.

The air saturated, the sky cloud-sodden, climbing the purple mountain as dusk falls, the light starting to fade, entering the pagoda, savouring its cool stone shade, the brief respite it offers from the oppressive humidity, climbing the flights of stairs and admiring the view from the top, where one feels eternal and complete, a gentle breeze stirring the torpid air, the emerald verdure stretching out down below, carpeting the land as far as the eye can see, the mist rolling up across the hills to touch the clouds, making out the concrete mass of the city’s skyline far in the distance, its compacted energy paling to insignificance against the plenitude of the surrounding landscape, the serenity of the present mingling with recollections of the paths leading to this sanctuary, of great stone steles inscribed with their ancient words of wisdom, of ponds rank with waterlilies and algae, of animals now calling out in the trees down below, embryonic memories of a still-living present, of a past yet to form.

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James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. Read more of his work at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.

Mark Doyle is an artist and illustrator working in painting, sculpture, printmaking and digital media. See more of his work at www.markdoyle.org and on Instagram @markdoyleartist.

Sketches of China 01: Arrival, Shanghai

Illustration. Mark Doyle

We are extremely pleased to welcome to Elsewhere a series of illustrations and texts that are the result of a collaboration between the writer James Kelly and the illustrator Mark Doyle:

Stepping out of the airport as night falls, boarding the Golden Dragon as the clouds give way to rain, struck at once by the immensity of life on an unimaginable scale, the bus gathering pace as the mythical beast speeds across the tarmac, entering a world of towering high-rises, their windows unlit, all but a few, the empty shapes of the buildings silhouetted instantaneously by forks of lightning, cleaving the sky asunder as the rain grows heavier, falling in sheets, monotonous, unrelenting, its drops bursting like grapes on the elevated expressway stretching on into the night, keenly aware of a sense of detachment, of separating from home, cast adrift in a landscape of frenetic development, a feeling of unstoppable momentum, the bus unable, despite the distance covered, to break free from a metropolis as dystopian as it is endless, from an aberrance from nature on a monstrous scale, yet savouring all the while the promise of discovery, of adventure, immersed in the moment, looking neither forward nor back.

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James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. Read more of his work at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.

Mark Doyle is an artist and illustrator working in painting, sculpture, printmaking and digital media. See more of his work at www.markdoyle.org and on instagram @markdoyleartist.

Pewenche - First Harvest

By James Kelly:

Late that summer in the evening sun, pausing to ask permission from the spirits before entering their forest. Climbing the hillside, feet kicking up clouds of dry, powdery soil, the dust hanging in the air. Emerging out into the clearing to survey the trees around us, sizing up the giant seed-cones with their bounties of fruit. Climbing again, this time just one, a lone figure dexterously scaling the tree, the nimble body intuiting the path, instinctive, without hesitation or fear, unfazed by the rough armour of foliage, hard and sharp, unforgiving yet giving to those who know how. Then the sound of rustling from atop, the figure trying to prise loose a seed-cone, premature perhaps, the first of the season. The tree resisting, unwilling to give up its treasures without a struggle. Time passing, the last golden rays of sun fading, the shadows creeping up the mountains across the valley, submerging the rocks and forests and leaving a coolness in the air. Gazing up at the tree in anticipation, scanning among the thrashing branches for the source of the noise. Then suddenly, prised loose, sent sailing through the air, the seed-cone falls to Earth, round like a football, heavy like a stone, landing with a dull thud that shakes the ground.

Later, as the evening begins to fade and the first stars appear in the boundless Chilean sky, we prise one of the seed-cones open to reveal the bounty inside. After giving thanks to nature and its spirits, we boil up some of the pine nuts and place them in a bowl on the table: warm and steaming, sweet to the taste. They are the first of that year’s harvest, the fruits of the pewen, or Araucaria araucana, the lifeblood of the Pewenche, whose name quite literally means the people of the pewen.

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James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. His work explores interactions between different timescales, from the human to the geological, and what we can learn from the cosmovisions of other peoples in our relationships with the land. More of his work can be found at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.

Parenthesis in Time: Journal entry from a road trip in northern Chile

By James Kelly:

Down in the valley, among the verdure, the landscape seems still, immobilised in time. Giant slopes of sterile rock bear down from above, arid, expectant in an epochal wait for rain. Yet carved between the high walls, the valley floor, with its regular crops of alfalfa and corn, is of a different time. The boulders and pebbles that lie scattered across the riverbed stand at rest, a temporary pause on their journey down from the Andean highlands to the sea. These petrified fragments of an immense telluric memory are testament to the youthful vigour of the mountains that bore them, the wave of rock that surged up from the Pacific Ocean to form the Andes.

Some of the stones, no doubt, have siblings way up there, up where the air is thin and fresh, where the snow-capped volcanoes of Isluga and Guallatiri attract giant storm clouds with their magnetic pull. Some of the rocks would have been present in the immense columns of burning ash and debris thrust skywards from the bowels of the Earth to hang suspended in the air by great updrafts of igneous gas, before collapsing in devastating waves that ripped down the mountain slopes with force enough to bury a small country under the volcanic rubble. 

And it’s there, up in that other world, in the heart of Cerro Anocarire, that the river begins, the same river whose flows have sculpted the valley and its hillsides. It’s there that the source of the water can be found, the water that washes gently over the pebbles, polishing and massaging them, conveying their sediments on towards the ocean, the same water whose minerals now nourish the transience of these sun-kissed plantations, day after day, year after year.

15:25, 9 January 2018. Camarones Valley, Arica and Parinacota Region, Northern Chile.

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James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. His work explores interactions between different timescales, from the human to the geological, and what we can learn from the cosmovisions of other peoples in our relationships with the land. More of his work can be found at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.