I can't get the video out of my mind, those infantile code names, Crazyhorse and Bushmaster, like when we used to play flashlight tag in the summer, in the suburbs. All the euphemisms, engage (kill), individual (human being), a vocabulary of kids trying to sound like adults. And then after killing so many humans for no real reason at all, someone just says, "Stop shooting" since the bad guys on the ground are all dead and friendlies have suddenly arrived. Afterward, as a consequence of this orgasm of violence, everyone is calm. Nobody behaves normally, like, oh maybe screaming hysterically.
To defer these preoccupations, I sauntered out along the Lot to the dam and the lock just upstream from the confluence with the Vert. It's uncommon to have such clear skies toward sunset so the light was good for taking pictures. At the confluence, you pass over this brick bridge of course, but I like to backtrack, to check underneath the bridge once in a while perhaps to find trolls. Upstream you can see a dam to the right of a small factory.
The lock is on the right bank of the Lot but the dam stretches across from bank to bank. This must have been a rapids before the dam and this lock is part of the system that facilitated floating wine barrels and other stuff toward Bordeaux on the Atlantic and then on to rest of the world.
It's probably obvious to everyone but me how any lock works. The part I get: With the downstream gate closed, the upstream gate opens to admit a boat. This upstream gate is closed behind the boat and the downstream gate opened. Like an elevator, the boat is lowered calmly to the downstream level without having to worry about white water, sharp rocks, whirlpools, etc.
The gates are all new, the gears nice and greasy but if you enlarge the photo below you can see the cobwebs because the boating season has not yet started.
What I don't ever quite get is why you have to built the dam across the entire river even though the lock itself is extremely narrow. What a lot of construction work for one narrow passage way. With a little luck, couldn't you just build the lock and hope enough water would rush in as you open the upstream gate to float your boat? But of course this would violate all laws of hydrology, serious laws. And you wouldn't get to hypnotize yourself watching how the glass-smooth upstream suddenly turns into a standing curl of frothing water and half a km stretch of boiling milk. Standing on the lock looking down you can't help wanting to jump, to join the boiling molecules.
Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sûres,
L'eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin
Et des taches de vins bleus et des vomissures
Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin.
Arthur Rimbaud
(Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples is to children,
Green water penetrates my pine hull
And stains of blue wine and vomit
Wash me, wash away rudder and anchor)
