J. G. Ballard R.I.P.

“Dreams of rivers, like scenes from a forgotten film, drift through the night, in passage between memory and desire.  An hour before dawn, while I slept in the trailer beside the drained lake, I was woken by the sounds of an immense waterway.  Only a few feet from me, it seemed to flow over the darkness, drumming at the plywood panels and unsettling the bones in my head.  I lay on the broken mattress, trying to steady myself against the promises and threats of this invisible channel.  As on all my weekend visits to the abandoned town, I was seized by the vision of a third Nile whose warm tributaries covered the entire Sahara.  Drawn by my mind, it flowed south across the borders of Chad and the Sudan, running its contraband waters through the dry riverbed beside the disused airfield.”