In the next scene there is a slightly pink tundra, flecked with spots of black. It is a probably the first slightly pink tundra in the history of movies the spots of black are lakes set into that frozen pink nothing is running across the tundra not one thing runs not even the wind the weave of the grass held in the permafrost does not move it is a beautiful landscape & it seems to extend forever
The slightly pink is tremendous, everywhere at once. Even though it cannot go past the edge of the screen that is it’s impossible to know if it does it is like a fog there is so much of it it seems that it could spill out forever that is exactly what the film seems to be saying listen the entire world is pink with flecks of dark listen there is not even a separate world that can be described as that color there is just the color that is all that one can expect if you want to call that fog a world that is your choice but you would just be consoling yourself once a fog gets into the lungs it will never leave you should learn to get used to this state of affairs because there is nothing to struggle against even if you cut the veins it will be fog fog fog not even morning noon & night just fog-morning fog-noon & fog-night pouring out of veins & frames
But the screen moves, zooming out to show more. There is a border to the tundra it is white and billowing in place this doesn't mean that there is motion it means that it resembles the stopped crests of large waves on the sea at winter if it had frozen suddenly perhaps it is a frozen sea next to the tundra the ponds may contain tar as opposed to water that would explain why they black & are not frozen & not for that matter a sea of matter
However, the pools of black get smaller, as the territory of sea expands its portion of the screen. More of the tundra is visible as is more of the sea we are moving away from the surface one wants to cry out stop where is it that we will go if not here when will this stop why do we always have to leave where it is that we have been staying it is not the kind of film willing to answer those questions but it is not dismissive of them it seems to understand why a sadness would speak itself this way it is for this exact reason that it moves so slowly in this way it allows for some time to get used to being so far from the surface of what now seems to be a world indeed on the other side of the pink facing the frozen billows a curving edge of pink and white-green the edge of a steppe the screen is distributed amongst three zones of color pink with black white with white pink with white-green it is very balanced in this framing & one certainly wishes it would not change
But as there was no staying in place before, there is not now. It does not matter what we want we must be very far from that surface indeed we are now far enough to see that this is a smattering of used coffee grounds on the iridescent pink skirt of a doll this is the tundra it is partially covered by the white rumpled edge of a plastic bag this has been a frozen sea it is partially covered by a rotting piece of bologna this is a steppe but only ever of rotting lunch meat yet it is no less of a landscape for all that this dismissal of the conjunction of flesh & land has always been the fatal error of armies & cartographers alike costing them both infinite losses in the grave fields of history
There are other objects too, besides those that made up the first landscape. Were we to get closer to them they might seem jungles plains cities but we are not close it is clear that they are what they are not fake tundras although it was us who put that tundra quality over what was merely pink flecked with black yet even so there is so little time to look at the other objects or to think about what they are unlike the work in the factory there is not time to do so because they are disappearing not vanishing into thin air but blowing away from the pile as if a rubbish wind blew them away if such a wind was to exist we cannot see where they are going but they are leaving while they do so they heal themselves a plate puts its shards together it clatters away on its edge diapers shrug off their dried mess they flap their white wings to find the box they came from a TV replodes it tumbles away nail clippers scrape off their own rust with bent files they nip free from the junk covering them to find somewhere else to do their cutting tissues iron out their own folds they shrug off blood or mucus or ejaculate they lilt off in that supposed wind this is shown in a number of shots each of which lasts the exact same amount of time it is the only good way to deal with the different materials here the film does not want to treat any of them as more important than the others & some are more exciting than others but this is not allowed to matter
The camera cuts back to the pile as a whole, but there is no pile left. It was just a collection of things they have thrown themselves away from where they had been thrown away now there is just a city that is completely intact if we look very closely we might think that we could find the cracks or the rot or the crumpling that made them be thrown away if we look closely we might see lines where they were cut loose as if they had been brought into a factory or if a series of bombs had opened high above them to release more small bombs which fell upon the city like rain but although that is real although we have seen it many times in this case this would be just imagination because everything is solid & right as rain or gold or anything that lasts longer than it should & then longer than that & if such a city were to burn it would not collapse into ash no it would merely harden into its glossy shine as lungs do when breathing the smoke of that same city & its future