Saturday 5 September 2009

One continuous movement

A man with a small can of gold paint sits on the pavement applying it delicately to the skirting and brocade work around a pub. A green balloon half full floats across the road. A woman touches the back of her neck with her hand from the inside of a window, then pulls a strand of this hair between her thumb and forefinger. Two policemen are holding the WALK sign trying to fix it back on the pole at the side of the road. The wires dangle out of one end of the box-unit. It lights up as they are both cradling it in their arms between them. There is barely anything in the first section of the shop that is being slowly emptied of all merchandise. Everything is piled at the back end where people make their way. On the shelves on the way in there are boxes and boxes identical in size all with pictures of grey stones on them. People slow as they pass. One man runs his palms over the demonstration stone by the side of one of the boxes where on the picture, water flows. I go into a church where there is free music. Electric guitars and a sweeping voice from a small head leant far back lifts me. It is a great harmonic clashing of colours, reflected back down in the high windows up above the dusty low hanging lights.There is this mounting presence that is building and I find myself becoming affected intensely. Then it stops. They begin to pack up putting the instruments away into the black cases in a matter of fact way. They leave the stage. I get a coke and go outside. I notice the spire is partly covered in cladding that gives it half way up, a square shape. When I return there is a man playing a finger piano and bending and straightening his legs in time. I stop in the park. There is movement in the grass. Maybe Squirrels. But no they are small rats. You know that by the way they are moving, never stopping, forging through the undergrowth with bellies floating just over the ground. It makes me want to hold my own stomach apart from the fascia around it. The rats cross along a fallen tree that spans above the water and reaches an island in the middle. A black cat runs on to the swollen and woven strands of tha base of the tree and then on to the thick end of that crossing. There is a scurrying sound. One of the rats drops off and hits the water. The cat continues. There are children in coloured clothes hanging on to the inner branches of a small tree over in the distance. A man calls to them as he moves towards the tree. He takes a picture from up close suddenly becoming very still. One by one they drop out then jump up from out of that grass as one continuous movement.

No comments:

Post a Comment