Summer?
The
weather continues to confuse. One moment
it is sunny, then cloudy, then hazy, a sudden downpour, humid, cool.
No,
I’m lying.
We have had some changeable weather that
Toni has described as ‘awful’, but all I have to do is translate it into
British terms of weather and I find that I am more than satisfied with what we
are getting. Yes, to be fair, it is not
entirely cloudless skies and unmitigated sunshine, but I have to realize that I
have been driven indoors because I am glistening with sweat and it is perhaps a
little too hot. The third floor study is
relatively cooler and, even if the fan doesn’t create cool air, it at least
moves it around a little.
Art passes
The
‘unsettled’ weather has also destroyed The Stain. I had great hopes that the slash of fading
red from the broken bottle of cheap wine would be something that could have
lasted through the rest of the summer, but two sharp torrential downpours seem to
have consigned my gestural piece of land art to evaporation and the gutter.
The
next time I pass on my newly charged electric bike, I must pause and see if
there is anything left. I do feel
somewhat self conscious taking photographs of nondescript parts of a pavement,
but it would be somehow ‘satisfying’ to find some tinted remnant lurking. Given the amount of time that I have spent
being confounded by various manifestos of the artistically self obsessed, it is
the least I can do to drag out the last pieces of aesthetic significance from a
chance event deemed art-worthy! And I
have to say that it was more interesting than some of the stuff that I have
been studying over the last couple of years via the course in the Open
University. Though, there again, I
defend maligned Modern Art with a vengeance when provoked by those who cannot
find an upturned and signed urinal to be provocatively original! Though with Duchamp I sometimes wonder, as
with Warhol, how much of his ‘art’ was clever and how much taking the piss -
and if the difference between the two is real, or indeed matters!
Anyway,
I am sad that The Stain has gone, but also recognize that one particular part
of the pavement in Castelldefels will be forever different (at least to me)
because of what it once contained. And
with Modern Art, who can ask for more?
The ghost of past hurt
I
follow my father in the way that I take the sun. My mother was fair skinned, blond haired and
blue eyed - and so was I when I was a pre-toddler. But after a few years my father’s genes
asserted themselves and my eyes went hazel and my hair (O tempora! O mores!) a very dark, almost black-brown, and in the
summer I went a more than acceptable shade of not white. When the summers were kind enough to have a
reasonable quantity of sun. Of course in
my childish memories, all summers were sunny, as were all visits (and there
were many) to Barry Island. In Barry my
excavations were frenzied and extensive, all my efforts devoted to building a
castle mound surrounded by a wall that would resist the sea, so that eventually
I would be sitting surrounded by the incoming tide.
The
real joy of course, was the even more frenzied activity to repair breaches in
the wall to obtain the “island” objective.
Sand was plundered from the castle mound to rebuild sea-washed defences
and eventual, and usually quick and complete failure was guaranteed. But once, and once only, did I achieve
sufficient repulsion of the sea to be surrounded. It was only momentary, but it remains an
achievement that I treasure!
Here
in Castelldefels we have no tides.
Technically, I am told, we do, but they are not aquatic events that you
would recognize sitting by the side of the sea.
Certainly, if you are more used to the tidal range of the Bristol Chanel
then Med. tides can be ignored!
So,
castle building does not have the same allure - and it is some sixty years too
late to hold the same attraction.
Admittedly, there was a spate of civil engineering in the sand when I
was in university in Swansea when streams on the beach (ask not of what the
water was composed!) lured me back to the sort of hand digging where you paid
the price through the sand impacted under the fingernails. Extensive systems of canals and dams were
built with Robert perfecting his technique of dripped sand buildings with
fantastic towers that rivalled the architecture of Gaudi.
I
find that I am not drawn to constructions and I also find that my ability to
lie in the sun has also lessened. Time
was when a Christmas holiday trip to Gran Canaria would seem me outstretched
for hours. On one particular day lying
on my hamaca in Maspalmoas it started to rain!
I and the other northern Europeans who had paid and arm and a leg to
stay on the island in high season simply ignored the adverse weather conditions
and waited for the weather to get better.
And it did. Or at least it got good
enough to lie there with out shuddering and we could continue to rely on the
penetration of the UV rays through the cloud cover to do what we had
expensively paid for. And anyway, it was
always worth it, greeting colleagues in cold Cardiff in January, and watching
their eyes take in my bronzed skin!
Nowadays,
I use factor 20 cream - rather than the perfumed cooking oil that I used to buy
to get that “deep down tan”. It never
worked and I always dreaded the day when I would finally start to peel and then
I would worry about the fact that I could be going home even whiter than when I
arrived!
Nowadays
I do not have to rely on two sunny weeks in foreign parts to get my tan
done. I live in foreign parts and they
do have a disproportionate number of sunny days - even in December and January
- when our nearest star can be enjoyed.
But
I also notice now that, as I brown, elements of my history show up on my
skin. For example, just above the second
knuckle of my middle finger of my right hand, there is now a faint outline of a
small, three-sided rectangle. It must
related to what must have been a fairly serious cut or graze, where a flap of
skin was ripped out of my flesh. It must
have hurt, there must have been quantities of blood and, given where it is positioned,
the flexing of my hand and finger must have pulled and broken the scab. On the right hand, as well, it must have
constantly been rubbed and knocked. It
must have been an extended and thorough nuisance. And what with the natural propensity to pick
and worry at healing scars it must have been a feature of my life for ages.
And
I have absolutely no memory of the injury at all. The ghostly outline is almost like a
accusation form my body. Look, it seems
to be saying, this happened, it was an event and you care so little that you
have consigned it to forgetfulness!
Other
scars have a back-story that I remember well.
The ball of the right-hand thumb and the slicing of an open salmon tin;
my right elbow and the tip over the tennis net during my victory leap; my inner
thigh where the rotten tree stump entered and broke off; my chin and the
collapse of friends on top of me in junior school; my lip and something on the
building site that bit back; my foot and a piece of rubble on the Asia side of
Istanbul - and all those scabs of childhood on knees and legs and arms that
would have to be layered in three-dimensional ghostliness to show the
succession of minor cuts and abrasions that is part of growing up.
I
have always found the expression “like the back of my hand” as a picture of
familiarity to be woefully inappropriate - I challenge you to describe yours
without looking at it! And, in my
opinion, apart from our faces (and let’s face it, we mostly recognize ourselves
from reflections in mirrors and that is absolutely NOT how we appear to other
people!) what parts of our bodies do we actually know?
It
is usually only when something is going wrong that we start to explore the
substances of which we are made. Which
is why I am grateful for my ghosts of past hurts. They make me think and they encourage me to
remember and with the absolute pleasure that comes with confused recollection,
although specifics might be inaccurate the experience can be retextured to my
own individual attitudes and prejudices.
I can remember about the cut
on my finger, even if the unique circumstances are lost. I know how I am and what I’m like, so I can
place the cut and call it mine.
