Albalablanch 2

As a universe, Albalablanch is the most laughable, insignificant, pointless universe ever made. Not that there was ever any other universe, mind you. The point of a universe, what we might call its claim to glory, is to be unique. As such, Albalablanch is no exception. It is unique, and alone, in the vast desert of nothingness that surrounds it. True, its size is considerably smaller than the size of a universe that would be made of, say, an estimated ten exponential eighty tiny tiny balls which would all gravitate around each other at a distance between ten thousand and one exponential one billion times their size. Such an absurb universe would surpass in size Albalablanch by a factor so great as to be meaningless. But, come to it, if all the inexplicable space between the tiny balls was collapsed, it is not beyond imagination -it could even be within algebraic laws- that it fit into a tower fourty kilometres wide by twenty kilometres high.

Let's thus consider Albalablanch as the compacted version of a universe of tiny balls - this, of course, purely for ease of understanding. In any case, Albalablanch remains what it is : a universe unique in space and time as only a universe can be, and as such, incomparable. The question remains as to how such an object can be surrounded by a desert. More to the point, how come such a solipsist entity can be buried under the level of anything up to a quarter of its height. This is a very good question indeed, so interesting and difficult a question that, to this day, asking it in Albalablanch remains the only offence which will grant you the death penalty.

London leaves and I stay

Sur Bow Churchyard un rayon de soleil passe
Il frappe les carrés rouges de l'église de briques
Sous son porche imposant, plain-cintre de pierre blanche
Une grosse lanterne pend
Elle est en verre épais et en fer forgé blanc
Dans un style qui rappelle celui d'une acienda
Comme le faisait l'Art Nouveau
En 1910, dans les vieilles rues de Lisbonne
Tandis qu'à Paris une poésie fleurissait
Eblouissante
C'est dans ces années que furent écrit tous les textes que j'aime
Les Pâcques à New York et puis la Jeanne de France
Et Zone, tout Alcool
Et Pierre Reverdy depuis Narbonne
Arrivait dans le nord
Dans les journaux on lisait Cornélius, la magnifique Guerre du Feu
Le fantôme bleu Fantômas
Sur Bow Churchyard autour de la dentelle d'une lampe
En fer forgé blanc dansent tous mes fantômes
Chansons, écrivains, mondes qui se bousculent
Sur quelques mètres dallés entre un fleuriste et moi
Sous son toit de toile verte que tiennent des poteaux minces
Le fleuriste, seul, travaille sans relâche
Il assemble en six mouvements un bouquet de roses blanches
De roses roses et de quatre fougères
Il en assure les tiges d'un petit cordon vert
Et encône le tout d'un plastique transparent
Puis il prend une feuille de papier crépon pourpre
Y enroule son bouquet
Avant de le poser dans un haut vase en fer blanc
Il y pique un gros lys crème
Le vent s'engouffre sous sa tente faisant claquer le toit comme une voile
Car Londres n'est pas bien loin de la mer
Le vent couche de beaux iris, la longue crête des glaïeuls
Arrache aux boules de neige quelques flocons de pétales
Il neige en septembre sur Bow Church la Rouge
Aujourd'hui mon père a soixante-neuf ans
Tout le ciel de Londres vogue, bleu et blanc
Ouvert comme un sourire quelque part vers le sud
Le vent frais (brisk) est plein de l'odeur d'un seul lys
Même l'ombre du platane aux formes noueuses
S'étire vers le sud
Septembre en attendant que les beaux jours reviennent
Tout Londres veut émigrer
Et mon coeur toujours plein de l'appel des voyages
Cette fois me dit: reste
Londres est un port: reste
C'est un navire: reste
Sur son pont si tu restes tu t'en iras toujours
Car Londres tout ouvert s'emplit du vent du monde
Et j'entends toutes les langues
Dans les cafés les serveurs ont épinglé sur leur poitrine
De petits drapeaux d'acier peint
Espagne, Brésil, Grèce, Paris, Auckland, Roumains
Ces Roumains qu'on chasse en France
Qu'on appelle Gitans
Tziganes, Romanichelles
Qu'on insulte, qu'on accuse, dont on dit qu'ils sont sales
Et voleurs, et menteurs, et puis quoi d'autre encore
Qu'ils ne se rasent jamais ou qu'ils ouvrent des gorges
La nuit
Qu'on juge, qu'on condamne et qu'on renvoie chez eux
Ces Roumains qu'on Interdit comme on a Interdit
           Les Juifs
           Les Indiens d'Amérique
           Les Noirs de Partout
Ces Roumains à Londres viennent et je pleure
La honte de mon pays
Debout sur Bow Churchyard dans l'odeur d'un seul lys
Où le vent tourbillonne
Où sur la crête des glaïeuls un toit de toile se gonfle
Où les nuages filent tout joyeux vers le sud
Où la ville comme un navire titube sous l'automne
Je pleure mon petit port apeuré
Mon mouillage que le monde emmerde
Ma ville que tous les vents évitent
Aujourd'hui comme sonne le chant du voyage
Je reste
Ici
Et j'attends passer la Terre.

Albalablanch 1

As a tower, Albalablanch is something of a monstruousity, an architectural marvel and a maintenance nightmare. Its sheer size would offer ample space for its population on one level only. Yet, Albalablanch has a recorded seventy of them, spread over a height of some twenty kilometres.

It would be wrong to infer that each level is separated from the one above by approximately 330 meters. The average height is of little significance here. While some levels, particularly the middle ones, can have up to three kilometres of sky, good-sized hills and deep lakes as well as meteorological phenomenons, other levels, specially the lower ones, form a mere system of caves, some so low that the population living there has to stoop. An ideal place for a prison, would you think, and you couldn't be more wrong. For reasons specific to Albalablanch the prison has been set up on the highest level, with its innumerable trapholes and its open roof.

But enough on this topic. Everything in good time. We will come back on the social configuration of the tower. This fascinating subject will unveil as we proceed with our story. As for now, let's stick to figures : twenty kilometres high, seventy levels (more than half of which underground for the tower only rises fifteen kilometres above the desert). Its walls are so thick that they shelter their own indigenous population - a population with a bad reputation, not so much because it lives in the margins (Albalablanch has many different margins which are a constant threat to the cohesion of the middle class) than because it is the only one with - limited - access to the truth.

The maintenance of its walls should really be everybody's concern. But for most of us, sharing a responsibility means that this responsibility is not ours. As a result, after millennia of existence, the walls of Albalablanch have grown into a weird compound prone to geological accidents and reshuffling, helped by the fact that, fifteen kilometres above ground, the climatic conditions are widely different from the warm stable environment of its lowest caves. The stress induced on the fabric of the tower is considerable. It releases here and there in thundering cracks, causing in the population closest to its walls epidemics of deafness. This in turn is often used as an excuse by the person who doesn't want to entertain social conversation : a couple of shouted "WHAT ?" and a pointing at one's ears stop any inquiry. "He was probably thunderstruck", people whisper, shrugging. And they leave you in peace : being thunderstruck means that you live close to the walls and that, therefore, you will most likely turn out to be some sort of weirdo.

Why I prefer London to Paris - Reason 3

On rainy days London sails by

Ship of iron and stone
Hooked to the clouds by Wharf and Shard
Soaked to the last of its rats bone.

I pass a bridge wide as a deck
Choked by winds at war
London wobbles, this drunken wreck !
Its empty streets ajar.

Hypnopompicture 10

Sun and rain
Mere stain
On a still sleeping mind
Deaf and blind
Cannot find
Their way to an escaping train

Albalablanch 0

Albalablanch is a good fourty kilometers wide. It is a respectable size for a town. It is a monstruous size for a tower. It is a tad narrow for a universe.

As a town it has everything one would expect: prisons, police stations, morgues, cemeteries, crematoriums, plus all the industries gravitating around the business of death, violent or not (non violent deaths have been recently reported on the increase): weapon factories and shops, fast transportation, cigarettes, alcohol, a few drugs, hospitals. Unexpectedly, given its particular shape and situation, Albalablanch also has the kind of old, heavy infrastructure which takes a toll in the tens of thousands every time it collapses - and it collapses every other week.

Of course it has all the amenities to produce and care for death's main ingredient: life. Hence a substantial human population -around thirty million as I write-, profusion of cattle on the top levels, fields in the lower levels (the natural weather being so unreliable), schools and offices (whose main purpose is to provide  favourable ground for mating), maternity wards and nurseries.

Albalablanch even has these little facilities humans are so fond of: clothes shops, food shops, houses and flats, hotels (entirely dedicated to business or sex and at their most succcessfull when combining both), places where humans can indulge in their bodily needs: bars and museums to keep the brain busy, sex-shops and prostitutes for a quick and easy fuck, millions of toilets to satisfy the pleasure of emptying their bowels, Churches, Mosques, Temples and Synagogues for the few remaining souls.

In short, Albalablanch could be described as a vibrant city by an outside observer, were there an outside left to observe it from.