December 5, 2020

Winter journey

Sounds, images and poems

“The origin of the word ‘Blighty’ is Hindustani. The word means ‘foreign’ (bilayati)”

“Death, like the sun, cannot be looked at steadily ”

— La Rochefoucauld 1678

“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.”

— Auguste Rodin

“Think each day when past is thy last; the next day, as unexpected, will be more welcome.”

— Horace

Thanking You in Greek

It is difficult to say thank you in Greek but....

As we hung from your shade-roof like open mouthed bats in the too hot day, shared bone-licked grouper and up-the-road eggs,

Swam in seas, dark as wine, and drank in the travels of Patrick Leigh Fermor, his olive words lubricated from the fifties and left out to dry, till now.

And as we lay flat against star flecked Saronic skies, meteors as shy as Aphaia, and listened to your stories of rock flamed chimneys, imperfect crowns and monocular sightings of space hardware, as we pass it and it passes us, heavens above,

Tales of Thetis, sea goddess and your daughter, who ate stones and scrapped brickwork with her teeth, whilst nearby zinc and copper plates split meridians and ink swam to the surface,

Of bottled rocks from your garden, and pigeons to be cast out for when the glass man meets the dancer and they reflect each other, perfectly.

For all this wonder

Your kindness

And friendship

We say ....Ef-hari-sto

Winter Soldier

My wife looks Napoleonic in her dark wool buttoned jacket, tough leather boots, light grey fur hat and square haversack.

She dresses like this, not just for Christmas but for a long winter, bearing against the chill of what might happen, of any sudden threat, loss or retreat.

She is fully prepared.

Natura Morta

I was younger than the others in the room and less likely to die. In Santa Maria hospital, in the centre of Rome, I could not be moved, only laid out on a wooden board without a mattress, until my spine could be settled and strapped into a framed corset. It would take a month .

My bed was by a street level window, where I would smell pizza, hear laughter and the flirt of two-stroke engines. Bells would break each day upon the hour until six when the Angelus and Passeggiata called others to action.

In the next bed was an Egyptian who had lost his sense of balance, now bed ridden. Opposite, Il Professore, who was old and infirm with an unknown diagnosis, and to his right, a bar owner with stomach cancer. It was a terrible waiting game for all of us - gioco in attesa.

They finally arrived. I was corseted in aluminium and canvas and stood up, to applause. A nurse smiled and in her broken English said, “You, like Frankenstein.” Removed from the slab, I was taken by taxi to the scene of the incident, the British School of Rome, where an epileptic fit had fractured both my spine and my summer.

Two days later, flu-like symptoms were diagnosed. Chicken pox and 30 days quarantine. I was fed pasta on a plate by a hand around a barely opened door. Pox was everywhere, in cheeks, hair, anus and nose. I did not look in the mirror or shave. I simply waited.

Pocked and pale, one month later I left the School for the Borghese Gardens. I watched a full dress rehearsal of a Carabinieri tattoo until finally I left and headed back. Only then, a V-formation of helicopters rose over the trees for the finale, a celebratory fly-past. Looking up, a sudden cloudburst of metal. The rear rotor of one had touched the main rotor of another. Both were falling, blade-less, one hitting the ground hard and starting to flame - both pilots were quickly engulfed and would subsequently die. The other spiralled wildly, it’s fall broken by a tree. It was shocking, and I was there to see it.

Returning to the School, witnesses were distressed. I was numb. Two days later I flew out of Italy.

It would be twenty years before I returned and thirty before I revisited the exact same spot.

Aftershave

"Would you be interested in Beckham's aftershave?" the chemist asks me behind the counter, while I wait for monthly medication to be counted.

"I bought that a month ago from up the road,” a man next to me gestures to the room.

"It cost nine pounds. Looks like Methadone."

Dressed in fur hood and jackets, he sways, agitated.

"I am sweating like a hog."

"My wife doesn't like aftershave," I answer.

"I am going outside for a smoke. Hope the cow lets me back in for my shot."

"She is too sensitive," I add.

Corps-a-Corps

Elaine’s most recent exhibition of her works at Arthouse 1 in London in 2018 was revealingly called Corps-a-Corps. This is a fencing term that in many ways underpinned her work: power and defence; strength and vulnerability; touch and balance.

Whilst earlier work was more directly figurative in articulating these concerns, as in the wonderful series of gun-toting porcelain women, the Thelma and Louise's of the display cabinet, this more recent sculpture was quieter, more reflective and foreboding.

Here, ceramic surveillance towers, hides or bunkers, perched on thin steel legs, crowded into a room, socially distanced. These ‘bodies’ watched us through their eye slots with caution, as we peered at them, quiet and waiting, aware of titles such as Sleeper and Shadow. Were they foretelling uncertainty? Our need for vigilance, security and surety? Sentinels against sudden change? Perhaps so, knowing that her work was always honest and insightful, as she was as a woman and an artist.

But now, they are particularly poignant and prescient. On her death I am reminded of the final image in the catalogue of a female fencer walking away from the viewer towards the darkness. The fight is done. She is released and the corps mirroring is broken.

She will be much missed.

in memory of Elaine Wilson

The Queen
The Queen lives three doors down. Her names is Grace and she is from Jamaica. She’s the same age as the Buckingham Queen but wears a brown wig and climbs ladders to change light bulbs.

Her room is pink and yellow with a TV that is too big and three sofas that don’t fit. Her daughter visits occasionally, gives her the juice she likes and tells her to stay indoors to be safe.

She always asks after my wife. Great with people, caring, perhaps a generational thing. She’s even pleased to give her house back to the council when she dies.

She is good that way.

Vertigo

This heightened sense came suddenly, at the death of your mother and the turn of an uncertain year.

Unexpected and unclearing, you lie in bed, a shadow of your mother, looking ahead at the fast moving world, only steadied by thoughts of heavy weights and low lying things.

I try to calm you, talk solidly, help you hold the railings, remind you of your walking yesterday and again tomorrow, of our summer in France and Italy on smooth lines and slow boats,

That the swimming is inside your head.

That your mind has misread the situation.

That we will get this straightened out.

Notes, snippets and jottings