This campus wants nothing to do with the earth. It lifts itself free of the earth. Would hover above the earth, if it could.
Unrooted in Newcastle. Unrooted anywhere. Floating free. Adrift of the particular earth. The local earth.
This whole campus disavows its terroir. Is in denial of its terroir. Is trying to forget its terroir. Because everything has a terroir.
Don’t fuck with the earth: that’s my advice to the campus. With the earth’s depths.
What’s going on down there, in the depths? Before it all turns into rock?
Currents, flows.
The terroir ruins. It’ll turn. It’ll ruse, in spontaneous rebellion.
Sinkholes, opening. The Entertainment Zone, down a sinkhole. Faith Zone, swallowed up as by a Dune-sandworm.
The earth, opening to claim them. The great chthonic maw. The devouring terroir. The chaotic terroir. The terroir of the tohu-vavohu …
That was a tremor – did you feel it? The Big One’s coming.
Was the campus built to withstand earthquakes? Did they expect tremors, in northeast England?
Can’t you hear it? It’s already begun. The process. These cracks.
Some geological process. Some rebellion of the earth. Some vast trembling.
The earth will push back. Will spring back, as after an Ice Age.
The earth will struggle up against the Organisational Management deep freeze. Against the great OM ice cube.
The earth, buckling. The earth, breaking.
A swallowing earthquake. An abyssal maw.
Do they postgraduates have anything to do with this? Is it the Bug?
Maybe vast, vast spaceships are landing. Some interdimensional disturbance.
Is it the bore gone wrong, gone wild?
Was the campus built wrong, from the start?
Some angel in the earth, beating its wings?
Maybe it’s the end of days. Maybe the roll is being called up yonder.
What about us – do we have an earth? We sort of Indians, sort of Brits. Where do we belong?
No one belongs anywhere. We’re strangers on the earth – that’s what Cicero would have said. The earth is just evil – it’s turned against us.
Work in Progress 