Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Solenoid

only one with no fence and it doesn’t need one, the way it sombrely dominates at the end of a waste ground full of rusty springs and ancient refrigerator containers. Everybody throws their old stuff in front of my house. It isn’t even actually ship shaped, it has a shape which stubbornly opposes any description. The lower side should be cubic, but it somehow became a pyramid section with the larger base above, like a paper boat. A crooked lop- sided tower stands on its platform. The tower can be reached on an external raw cement spiral stair twisted tightly up to the only door of the room, worn-out by bad weather. The lower floor, the actual house has an almost monumental

entrance: a heavy wrought iron gate depicting two long haired maidens carrying lamps in their thin hands. To the left there are two square windows latticed with the same wrought iron, black iron in thin convulsively contorted bars. The front is grey, worn out like all the other houses in the street. The round window of the tower burns madly in the sun at any time of the day. The tower is unearthly beautiful against the clear sky full of white fluffy clouds of summer mornings, but in deep evenings the scarlet flame of the window stuns you. This demented, desperate shine, this cry for help made me then, on that October evening, desire the ugly sad house more than anything in the world.

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