(no subject)

[aslant]

oil well.

there were oil wells everywhere. nosing up and down like insects (according to kirk) or women ducking down to do laundry (according to me). i tried to count them and couldn't. they were fascinating, and the only audible sound for miles. you couldn't hear them until you got up close, and then they sounded just like large rotating machinery could be expected to sound (i thought they would sound like ogra's machine). unless you were near one, there was a deafening lack of noise. no car, no bird, no highway.



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up close they moved with a strange fluidity. there was the intense smell of saltwater - which is pumped down to force the oil up. the actual point of the entire structure is a narrow nose tube that plunges down into the earth.



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kirk said when he was 15 he climbed up and rode one. you turn it off and climb up the ladder and climb out onto the strut and turn it back on.



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this is where the needlenose plunges down into the ground. this part of it was smelly. it was encrusted with solidified salt drips (the white) and coated in thick sludgy lube drips (the black).



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