The Cretan Says 'All Cretans Are Liars'
The Cretan says 'All Cretans are liars'.
People talking, not talking, white noise walking. It's more than blah. Glass crackle. Urban myth, log it in your head, glass isn't a liquid. Did you hear me? GLASS IS NOT A LIQUID! I know shouting is ineffectual. IT DOESN'T DRIP, even if you sat and watched it for a thousand million years, it wouldn't drip. IT'S BULLSHIT! Can you hear me people? What they say, the crap you swallow, while nodding sagely, all that information you've got stored in your heads, IT'S MOSTLY BULLSHIT. They're lying to you all the time. But you knew that already, didn't you? You know when they're lying because their lips are moving. Good. Right. Just needed to get that straight.
We went on holiday, to Cornwall, St Ives to be precise. I liked the idea of it. I wanted to see Henry Moore sculptures. Sometimes I pretend I am interested in art. You can waste your life if you say you are interested in art. It gives you a reason.
Rosa was sick in the car. We got lost on Dartmoor. I remembered the story about the woman, whose vehicle broke down. Her boyfriend got out to find some help. An hour later there was a persistent thumping on the roof. A lunatic, because it is always a lunatic, had killed her boyfriend, decapitated him and was using his head to attract her attention. I wondered whether it was a clean cut.
The cottage was lovely, with a verandah and wisteria. It crouched on the side of a steep cliff. A winding path led us down the beach. Sand. We do not have sand in Brighton, just those big pebbles. Sand seems so accommodating to a child's idea of fun.
In the town, apart from a fair smattering of hippies, there was more beach. One day we saw a man carve a Grecian looking horse out of it. We watched him for a long time. I did not feel apologetic that I had no money to give him. He could see my three young children. I sat baby Raven on the sand. She squeezed it through her fingers and tried to put it into her mouth. I stopped her. She tried again. I stopped her again. In the end I let her taste it, thinking she would probably learn that it was horrible and then spit it out. Sometimes experience is the best teacher.
Trisha says she used to know a kid called Hope, but then they changed her name, because her Mom was always saying 'No Hope, no Hope'. You would not want that on your conscience.
Jordan bibbled about, with his long ringlets and quiet eyes. So blue. Just like mother, and mother's mother. He liked his bucket and spade. I showed him how to add just the right amount of water so all the sand would stick together. We made a big castle, all of us, with ramparts and a moat and shells decorating those square, pointy bits on the towers. I told him we had to leave it there. That the sea would come and take it away. He said “Like a dream?”
And I said “Neptune will mix it in the cake of promises, because that's what the water does. It has to become nothing so that it can become everything”.
He laughed his fat faced chuckle. I scratched 'Jung' into the sand with my toe. Matt said “You're only Jung once”. It was my turn to laugh.
I hate scampi. It is like chewing deep fried rubber.
We wandered around the Tate at St Ives. Bridget Riley made me curious. Patterns that jiggled my eyes. Repetition. I struggled with 'what is art?' I thought maybe I had missed something. Inside my head pop songs wiggled through verses. Turning to the walls I could see all this effort, framed, indemnified against vilification. The gallery windows were huge. Glass staring out to sea. The palette blue-grey, steel and sky, then transparencies. Outside perhaps a natural art, inside something forced, unreal, requiring the mediation of mind over matter. I thought the intellectual event would suffocate me. We left. The children scuffed their shoes along the floor to make squeaking, farty sounds.
And then at Gwithian. A beach that went on forever. Miles of sand dunes, 20 foot high, grass sprouting out of them like an unkempt haircut. Reminded me of Mr Potato Head. As a child pressing drawing pins, wrapped in string, into the skull. Mother shouted at me. It ruined the vegetables. Father smiled, especially when I stabbed the raisins in for eyes and the bacon rind for a mouth. Mr Potato head could be happy or sad. The drawing pins were his dimples.
No-one told us about the tide, not until we were on the beach. Two old men, walking, carrying fishing rods, said “Be careful, or you might get cut off. Don't let yourselves get trapped at the foot off the cliffs”. The rock faces, like Mr Potato Head, had mutable features. I felt my way along their craggy creases. Grey, flinty. I expected that their expression could change, but only over centuries.
We found a safe perch. Matt sat like a suited and booted bird, kicking at the sand, picking out small, irrelevancies. No-one goes to the seaside in a suit. I took a picture of him. The sky behind him was a brilliant blue. It stretched on forever.
Despite the incoming tide I wanted to swim. Water has always been delicious to me. I changed into my bathing suit, a black glove stretching from my neck down to my knees. It was not false modesty, rather a hatred for my body.
The tinkling waves bubbled around my feet. Soft sand under my soles. Warm on the beach. Cold in the water. Astringency bit as I went in deeper. My body tried to twist away from the freezing fizz. Acclimatise, acclimatise. I tried to remember not to hold my breath and let my chest go hard. Gasp, gasp. Only makes you more uncomfortable. Necessary to relax. Let go. Shock will pass presently. If you tense you hold onto the shock. Let it go. Horizontal. Flattening myself into the water. It holds me. It seeps through my swimming costume and washes cold onto my belly. Arms out. I commit to the water. I feel it around my shoulders, pulling at my hairline. Legs lift and kick, arms scoop their way. Little body. Big, wide ocean.
When I come back to the beach Matt is smiling and the children are waving. There is sand in their hair and sand in his shoes. The salt of the sea dries quickly on my sunburnt face, making my skin feel tight. I lick my lips. A bitter sting.
The place is deserted. I strip down to my nakedness so that I can be dry. The blonde grass growing out of the dunes is harsh, coarse. Its blades dig into my skin. I pluck one and place it between my thumbs, bending my fingers up, the way mother used to. I blow hard and a sharp noise blasts into the air. The children's heads snap round, suddenly alerted to a newness. I do it again. Rosa is instantly on her feet, wanting to know how it works. I show her and wonder if she will pass this on, sometime in the distant future, and remember the time, on the beach, in Cornwall, when her mother was naked, and one, crystal clear, noise cut through to the blue sky.
Read more!
People talking, not talking, white noise walking. It's more than blah. Glass crackle. Urban myth, log it in your head, glass isn't a liquid. Did you hear me? GLASS IS NOT A LIQUID! I know shouting is ineffectual. IT DOESN'T DRIP, even if you sat and watched it for a thousand million years, it wouldn't drip. IT'S BULLSHIT! Can you hear me people? What they say, the crap you swallow, while nodding sagely, all that information you've got stored in your heads, IT'S MOSTLY BULLSHIT. They're lying to you all the time. But you knew that already, didn't you? You know when they're lying because their lips are moving. Good. Right. Just needed to get that straight.
We went on holiday, to Cornwall, St Ives to be precise. I liked the idea of it. I wanted to see Henry Moore sculptures. Sometimes I pretend I am interested in art. You can waste your life if you say you are interested in art. It gives you a reason.
Rosa was sick in the car. We got lost on Dartmoor. I remembered the story about the woman, whose vehicle broke down. Her boyfriend got out to find some help. An hour later there was a persistent thumping on the roof. A lunatic, because it is always a lunatic, had killed her boyfriend, decapitated him and was using his head to attract her attention. I wondered whether it was a clean cut.
The cottage was lovely, with a verandah and wisteria. It crouched on the side of a steep cliff. A winding path led us down the beach. Sand. We do not have sand in Brighton, just those big pebbles. Sand seems so accommodating to a child's idea of fun.
In the town, apart from a fair smattering of hippies, there was more beach. One day we saw a man carve a Grecian looking horse out of it. We watched him for a long time. I did not feel apologetic that I had no money to give him. He could see my three young children. I sat baby Raven on the sand. She squeezed it through her fingers and tried to put it into her mouth. I stopped her. She tried again. I stopped her again. In the end I let her taste it, thinking she would probably learn that it was horrible and then spit it out. Sometimes experience is the best teacher.
Trisha says she used to know a kid called Hope, but then they changed her name, because her Mom was always saying 'No Hope, no Hope'. You would not want that on your conscience.
Jordan bibbled about, with his long ringlets and quiet eyes. So blue. Just like mother, and mother's mother. He liked his bucket and spade. I showed him how to add just the right amount of water so all the sand would stick together. We made a big castle, all of us, with ramparts and a moat and shells decorating those square, pointy bits on the towers. I told him we had to leave it there. That the sea would come and take it away. He said “Like a dream?”
And I said “Neptune will mix it in the cake of promises, because that's what the water does. It has to become nothing so that it can become everything”.
He laughed his fat faced chuckle. I scratched 'Jung' into the sand with my toe. Matt said “You're only Jung once”. It was my turn to laugh.
I hate scampi. It is like chewing deep fried rubber.
We wandered around the Tate at St Ives. Bridget Riley made me curious. Patterns that jiggled my eyes. Repetition. I struggled with 'what is art?' I thought maybe I had missed something. Inside my head pop songs wiggled through verses. Turning to the walls I could see all this effort, framed, indemnified against vilification. The gallery windows were huge. Glass staring out to sea. The palette blue-grey, steel and sky, then transparencies. Outside perhaps a natural art, inside something forced, unreal, requiring the mediation of mind over matter. I thought the intellectual event would suffocate me. We left. The children scuffed their shoes along the floor to make squeaking, farty sounds.
And then at Gwithian. A beach that went on forever. Miles of sand dunes, 20 foot high, grass sprouting out of them like an unkempt haircut. Reminded me of Mr Potato Head. As a child pressing drawing pins, wrapped in string, into the skull. Mother shouted at me. It ruined the vegetables. Father smiled, especially when I stabbed the raisins in for eyes and the bacon rind for a mouth. Mr Potato head could be happy or sad. The drawing pins were his dimples.
No-one told us about the tide, not until we were on the beach. Two old men, walking, carrying fishing rods, said “Be careful, or you might get cut off. Don't let yourselves get trapped at the foot off the cliffs”. The rock faces, like Mr Potato Head, had mutable features. I felt my way along their craggy creases. Grey, flinty. I expected that their expression could change, but only over centuries.
We found a safe perch. Matt sat like a suited and booted bird, kicking at the sand, picking out small, irrelevancies. No-one goes to the seaside in a suit. I took a picture of him. The sky behind him was a brilliant blue. It stretched on forever.
Despite the incoming tide I wanted to swim. Water has always been delicious to me. I changed into my bathing suit, a black glove stretching from my neck down to my knees. It was not false modesty, rather a hatred for my body.
The tinkling waves bubbled around my feet. Soft sand under my soles. Warm on the beach. Cold in the water. Astringency bit as I went in deeper. My body tried to twist away from the freezing fizz. Acclimatise, acclimatise. I tried to remember not to hold my breath and let my chest go hard. Gasp, gasp. Only makes you more uncomfortable. Necessary to relax. Let go. Shock will pass presently. If you tense you hold onto the shock. Let it go. Horizontal. Flattening myself into the water. It holds me. It seeps through my swimming costume and washes cold onto my belly. Arms out. I commit to the water. I feel it around my shoulders, pulling at my hairline. Legs lift and kick, arms scoop their way. Little body. Big, wide ocean.
When I come back to the beach Matt is smiling and the children are waving. There is sand in their hair and sand in his shoes. The salt of the sea dries quickly on my sunburnt face, making my skin feel tight. I lick my lips. A bitter sting.
The place is deserted. I strip down to my nakedness so that I can be dry. The blonde grass growing out of the dunes is harsh, coarse. Its blades dig into my skin. I pluck one and place it between my thumbs, bending my fingers up, the way mother used to. I blow hard and a sharp noise blasts into the air. The children's heads snap round, suddenly alerted to a newness. I do it again. Rosa is instantly on her feet, wanting to know how it works. I show her and wonder if she will pass this on, sometime in the distant future, and remember the time, on the beach, in Cornwall, when her mother was naked, and one, crystal clear, noise cut through to the blue sky.
Read more!
posted by morrigan nihil at 4:45 PM
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