A rainy day in Lisbon...

Norilsk

"It's a landscape out of a science fiction film. Mile after mile of industrial plants, some of it rusting and discarded, but most of it operating as is evident from the trails of smoke rising from countless chimney stacks. Ore-dressing plants, smelters, refineries, power stations and goodness knows what. I try and do a quick count of the bigger complexes but give up when I realise there are far more here than Norilsk Nickel officially lists. Between them run pipes, elevated slurry chutes, power lines and railway tracks. Lakes of ominously dark liquid lie all around"
- Andy Home, "Siberian Dreams"

[photo by Windle Pons]

Andrew Bird playing 'Giant of Illinois' live at the Civic Opera House, Chicago

The giant of Illinois
died from a blister on his toe
after walking all day through the first winter snow

throwing bits of stale bread
to the last speckled doves
he never even felt his shoes filled with blood

delirious with pain, his bedroom walls began to glow
and he felt himself soaring up through falling snow
and the sky was a woman's arms

a boy with a club foot
had sat next to him in school
once upon a summer's day
they went wandering through the woods

they spotted a sleeping swan
on the banks of a muddy stream
and they stormed it with rocks
till it collapsed in the reeds

they lay out on the grass
full of chocolate and lemonade
but underneath it all the giant was afraid
the sky was a woman's arms