Whoops!

Is clumsiness cyclical?

I ask because I seem to be in the middle of a phase of if-it-isn’t-nailed-down-break-it-itus.

So far, over the past couple of days, I have smashed a wine carafe, the high-frequency dog repeller and a multi-charger.  I have hit my head on a curtain post and stubbed by toe on a wall.  I have dropped things innumerable, crushed bread and watched receipts fly away in the wind.  In short, around me, things which should be immobile until I give them velocity, have taken on a life of their own.

I think it is related to my nails.

My nails have never been of the hard as diamonds variety, but recently they have been as brittle as a Chief Whip’s attempts to show that he is a man of the people and not a squalid classist lying snob.

My attempt to open a can of Bitter Kas wreaked havoc with my nails and they are now as short as a student’s dress at the end of St Mary Street in Cardiff late at night in the depths of winter when all the clubs are open.  A bit of an extended and over specific simile there, but you only have to be the end of St Mary Street at the right time and observe the astonishingly sparse clothing of obviously hardy (if sometimes inappropriate) girls to have the image fixed in your mind for ever!

I think that my frayed nails are an outward and visible sign of an inward malaise which has resulted in flailing limbs connecting with various parts of the physical universe in an inappropriate manner.

I seem to remember that eating jelly for its gelatine is a good thing to do with nails such as mine.  Or one can simply take more care.

To Toni’s continuing despair I do not follow his “everything in his place” philosophy – even making allowances for his individual use of the possessive pronoun.  Where I sit is the calm epicentre of wreckage spreading like a tsunami until it reaches the sphere of influence of someone tidier than I.

For example in the immediate vicinity there is a multi-charger which I have just knocked over yet again; an I-pad; an empty cup; a camera; a cheque; a stamp catalogue; a camera; a leaflet, a computer case and the metal cap of a Cava cork that I am saving for Tina’s sister-in-law – and all of that is just on top of the chest of drawers (actually an IKEA metal-mesh filing cabinet on wheels) which is next to my chair.

On my part of the coffee table there are three guides to various art galleries; a collection of leaflets; a collection of poems; three instruction manuals; a magazine; a catalogue for a recent exhibition; employment documents in an envelope; a box containing a Nano I-pod and earphones, receipts and pens; a Kindle, a dog irritator and details of this month’s rent.  And my slippers are next to the table.

On the floor . . . but you get the idea.  Gradually my “area” is being defined by what I have always regarded as the main aim of life: the accumulation of things!

Even I have to admit that the very “thingness” of my surroundings is getting a little oppressive, almost as if I am digging myself in to keep the wider world at bay.  A winnowing needs must occur – although it is often enough for me to articulate the intention and then to allow that to take the place of action.

But, as I write that, Toni and his Mum have just left for one of their marathon walks along the paseo, so this timing is encouragement for me to get something done so that they can ignore my efforts on their return!

I am almost galvanized!

And galvanized I was.  

By the time of their return my “area” was transformed into an expanse of arid conformity with some abstract idea of placement and order.  

And not a single solitary glance or word of acknowledgement of my Herculeanean efforts.  At all.  I don’t know why I bother!

And now I can’t find a damn thing.

Books at will

My innate sense of timing was shown yet again in my second-perfect departure from the pool exactly at the time that the kids walked through the door to start their lesson!  You’ve either got it or you haven’t!

Today was warm enough to allow me to lie out on the Third Floor for an acceptable period of time – which was just as well as we appear to be in for an extended period of cloud cover and worse.  By the weekend I will be seething if I have not had my MSQ (minimum sun quotient) but I have to admit it is a rare day indeed in this part of the world if you get an entire day without at least a gleam of sunshine.  So I shouldn’t complain.  But I do.

I have been told by old hands who have been in the country for years that eventually you get “fed up” (their words) with sunshine and actively seek to avoid it.  I have taken this as hysteria on their part as I have seen not a jot of diminution of heliocentric behaviour on my part!

I am now well into the book which I bought because I could.  That is one of the real dangers of a Kindle.  Reading through the Guardian on the device and listening to the very literate fellow travellers who write in the august organ, it is very tempting to take a critic at his or her word and instantly find the book recomm3ended in the Kindle store and, before you know it some automatic system of your hand has kicked in and you’ve bought it.

My almost latest purchase (once you’ve started buying the temptation is to continue!) is a book called “The Islands” by an Argentinian Carlos Gamerro which has recently been translated from Spanish into English.

The novel uses the Falkland Islands, or more properly Las Malvinas from the Argentine point of view, and their loss as a symbol for a sort of critique of Argentine society.  The action of the novel is extraordinary and has a true hallucinatory quality.  I am gripped by it and am slightly forsaking the reading of the True Newspaper to give more time to it.

I have decided that I have not done enough intense reading throughout the summer – if I don’t get back into the habit I am going to lose the skill.  Ho!  Ho!

Lots done!

To my utter disgust the pool was packed with kids this morning and that was only after I had more trouble than usual finding a parking space.  Horror piled on horror!

But, true to form I was beckoned by the ever-helpful staff towards a lane kept free for humans and I was able to complete my twenty minutes in customary solitude.

I chose to sit in the sun for my cup of tea to make up for the gloom of yesterday and read my on-going novel on my mobile phone.  This is a science fiction story called “The sun dragon” or “Dragons of the sun” or some combination of sun and dragon that I have seen so often I have forgotten it!  I have been reading this bloody book for what seems like most of my adult life.  I only read it when I have forgotten to bring my Kindle to the pool – and I am pretty good at remembering it so this is one of the most extended readings I have ever done.

Eventually I will give in and settle down with the damn thing one evening and get the thing read.  I was never really one to wait and delayed gratification is more a theory that a way of life for me!

Part of the morning was taken up with my attempt to short circuit Spanish bureaucracy. 

This was, of course, irrational on my part and I was duly put in my place and told to go away and make an appointment via the Internet so that I could come back to the place that I was already in.  If you see what I mean.  It says something for the length of time that I have been in this country that I did not even consider asking if I could make an appointment face to face as it were.  I left with the web site name.  And the appointment is now made.  Simple.

After restocking the yogurt shelves in the fridge after a duty visit to the supermarket and gratefully eating a lunch cooked by Toni’s mum who seems to be enjoying her respite cure, I rushed off to Barcelona to catch the exhibition that Suzanne has been encouraging me to go and see in the Fundació Joan Miro.

“Projecció” is an exhibition by Mona Hatoum whose only piece of work that I can be positive that I have seen previously is “Paravent” which is a metal articulated screen made in the form of various linked food graters!  Good to see it again.

After a first viewing of the items in the exhibition and then sitting in the courtyard of the museum sipping an ice-cold glass of Cava I was grateful for Suzanne’s insistence.

By far the most thought-provoking item for me was “Cube 9x9x9” constructed out of thin mental rods with a nod towards barbed wire.  I found this unsettling and disorientating; elegant and sinister.

The construction was severely symmetrical so that the observer could constantly create planes where none existed by seeing linked sequences of rod lines.  The transparency of the object allows, or rather forces, the viewer to see the horizontals and verticals and the inclined planes that form and are changed in an instant by the slightest movement of the head.

There are also lines that don’t “fit” in the symmetry of the internal structure of the object.  They put me in mind of the seemingly extraneous lines that complement the obvious geometry of squares and rectangles in Mondrian paintings.  They add mystery, they are like grace notes in music – ornamentation but essential to a full understanding.

I was drawn back to this object again and again, both attracted and frustrated by the dancing dynamics that the lines formed.  I felt constrained by the object almost as if it was dictating its observation: who was watching whom?

The “barbs” twisted around the rods seemed to have been placed at random to confuse and complicate the severity of the essential structure.

I think that ideas of authority, repression and, paradoxically freedom are all contained in this apparently simple form.

The other piece which stood out was “+ and –“ which was a metal arm revolving in a circular container filled with light coloured sand.  On half of the arm was serrated and left grooves in the sand while the other half of the arm was flat and smoothed the sand back to flatness.

Fairly obvious ideas of creation and destruction; the ying and the yang, and any other opposites you might think of come to mind, but I was more interested in the fact that the smoothed sand was not left as a featureless plain.  There were patterns left in the sand – obliteration failed!

Presumably dirt, dust, skin particles or visitors, moisture and the impossibility of perfection must all paly a part in making the sand “individual” in each installation in which is it is placed.  Also the imperfection of engineering must play its part.

It is fascinating that what should be a symbol of futility actually becomes a paean of praise to individuality.  To hell with entropy!

To describe some of the other pieces would be to belittle them – this is an exhibition in which you have to be there to appreciate the dramatic success of some things which may appear to be wilfully mundane if described in mere words.

All I can say is that if you get the chance to experience the work of Mona Hatoum you should take it.

Especially if you go to an exhibition in Barcelona on Mercé the specific day of fiesta for the city when entrance to museums is free!

Waiting

A depressingly overcast day – though, being Spain, a few fragments of sunshine were thrown in our direction in the late afternoon.  For which I was appropriately grateful.

My swim in a pool, whose retractable roof was firmly extended to keep the weather out, was accompanied only by the distant (blurred) vision of the lifeguard sitting down waiting for an active body to give her job reason.

I was a little later at getting to the pool today, and still I was the only person in the water.  I am getting a little concerned about the lack of swimmers.  I know that swimming pools are amazingly expensive to upkeep and I do not want the place closed through lack of customers.

I am now getting to the stage where I can gauge my twenty-minute limit without reference to my watch.  I also think that another instinctive response came into play which is an integral part of the survival weaponry of teachers: I stopped swimming at exactly the point at which a father and two small children walked through the doors to splash about.  Some responses are in-built!

Tomorrow with any luck I will catch the tail end of a recommended exhibition in Barcelona.