I notice a cat on a portion of overgrown land fenced off all the way round. The land is an overhang by the side of a railway track. The cat was sat on a stone in the middle of that growth.
There is a cancellation. I was not told about it. I have time on my hands. There are other things I could be doing. I could be buying a mop and a bucket.
I leave. I cross the green and end up diverting into the green square of the bowling green. I prop my bike round the back of a bench and walk around in order to sit on it.
The eyes of a man glance over the edge of a window in a portakabin at the back of the bench. Before I sit down I notice that the door to the cabin is open and I see cleaning utensils propped up against the inside wall of a narrow corridor.
I sit on the wood of the bench which is worn away in places - cracked and splintering into powder so that the upturned screws that were driven in from underneath are revealed boring into the now lost wood.
Without really thinking about it I am rubbing the wood which remains between my forefinger and thumb, like tobacco. I am breaking off pieces and then rolling it like that into soft pulp and then into slivers or dust letting it drain away between my fingers.
I am breaking off larger and larger pieces where the wood still cracks as I get more and more involved as if it were bark from a tree. I find it relaxing to do. But I`m suddenly aware that this is a bench, the gnarled and fangled ribbing of the supportive and rusting metal structure on the underside through which the screws as they were sent into the wood were once driven, reminds me of that.
Does the man in the portakabin witness my act? A criminal act.
Two men, one young, one older enter the bowling green. They ask me if it is permitted to come in to this area. I say "Yes".
They glance towards the window of the portakabin. I look too but do not see any one there.
My phone goes off. I answer. I get up to leave.
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
She was a friend of mine
She stopped me in the road. Caught my attention. I stopped, straightened up from where I was bent over. Turned. Looked. There was a pause as our two faces matched. "Do I know you?" I said. She contined still smilling, still open, holding in tension that possibility. Believing in it. I scanned my memory of possible fits. Trying to make it work. She collapsed it. "Sorry I thought you were someone else". She moved off. Stopped outside a bookshop scanning the titles.
Earlier in a cafe with my back to the open door that led out into the road, I'd fixated on a bucket out in a backyard which could be seen through a series of two doors left ajar that lined up from where I was sitting. Drops of water bounced in and out again of this nearly full bucket so that the surface water rippled continuosly. I could not tell where the water was coming from because the door frame cut off midway my vision of the water descending. It was probably coming from a pipe because, as I knew full well- although I actually looked up to double-check- it wasn't raining. A man came in by that door and closed it.
Two pieces of furniture on the pavement struck me on the way out just before the incident with the woman where I said "Do I know you?" It was a small uphostered chair with an interesting curvature of the back and smooth nicely finished wooden legs and an even smaller side table made out of a single piece of polished yellowing plywood curved back on itself into an S. Together they created a beautiful clashing of surfaces. As I walked along the street I in fact kept looking back at these always adapting angles that lined up differently on every step and turn that I made. At the moment when I look back for the last time an old woman, tiny in frame who is bent over with her neck pressed into her shoulders with a soft downy and open face comes out of the shop dressed in brown and positions herself round to the front of the chair.
I actually got to the foot of the bridge where a sign warned of essential work being carried out. I could see a digger over by the old filter beds across on the other side of the canal where the level of the water drops suddenly to divert into the parallel flow of the River Lea creating an affect like a water fall with a constant sound that I like to hear when I am tired. That is by the side of a fig tree dusty from the road above where figs never grow to full size and by an old round lock house where the slates on the roof are beginning to fall. A man sat in the driver seat of that digger with his head far back. It was not moving or making any noise at all. I turn back and go in the other direction past a pub where there was a sign advertising an 18 piece band the weekend after next. But before I got there a man and a woman passed me. The man called back to me asking me if the bridge was closed. "No" I said.
I am passing building constructions, some almost completed, the cladding hugging it from the ground up. In other sections you can look right into the timber framework of the various partitions that are demarcating rooms, corridors, individual living units. Some of the new glass windows look out onto the canal and some look in onto the playing field where the coloured frames of a children's play area can be seen in the distant. They are even dredging the canal, piling up all the rubbish in various cordoned off sections of water for later collection. Down the other way the Olympic Park is under construction. There's a recession everywhere else but in this derelict part of Hackney of pre-war vacant Wharehouses and unexploded bombs the ground is being meticulously cleared and prepared for this housing project, one of many satellites out from the hub of the Olympic village.
I cross the bridge further up. I see that the cows have been put back on the marshes where they have been absent all summer. I collapse by the row of mature trees just down the slope. There is an upturned red traffic cone near to where I sit and some discarded paper. I think about moving the cone or at least standing it up but don't. I lie there like that. On the ragged grass with powdery earth between the tufts. When I open my eyes I hear the trees. My neck is stiff but I manage to twist it behind my left shoulder just enough to catch the flickering motion of leaves curling this way and that on themselves. It is an arangement of light and dark crashing in on one another. Stealing the space in a constant flicker. The wind is picking up. I walk behind the man and dog much further off now at the far end of the field. I turn onto the raised up decking which is a narrow path made of slats and slats of cut and nailed together lengths of wood. These are then covered with chicken wire pulled tight across the slats and also bolted down. I am passing the cows and at a very specific moment when I look over to where one of them is sitting the other one standing their horns appear to lock together. It is as if they were physically connected even though as I walk on these horns again float apart. One of the cows turns it's head.
Earlier in a cafe with my back to the open door that led out into the road, I'd fixated on a bucket out in a backyard which could be seen through a series of two doors left ajar that lined up from where I was sitting. Drops of water bounced in and out again of this nearly full bucket so that the surface water rippled continuosly. I could not tell where the water was coming from because the door frame cut off midway my vision of the water descending. It was probably coming from a pipe because, as I knew full well- although I actually looked up to double-check- it wasn't raining. A man came in by that door and closed it.
Two pieces of furniture on the pavement struck me on the way out just before the incident with the woman where I said "Do I know you?" It was a small uphostered chair with an interesting curvature of the back and smooth nicely finished wooden legs and an even smaller side table made out of a single piece of polished yellowing plywood curved back on itself into an S. Together they created a beautiful clashing of surfaces. As I walked along the street I in fact kept looking back at these always adapting angles that lined up differently on every step and turn that I made. At the moment when I look back for the last time an old woman, tiny in frame who is bent over with her neck pressed into her shoulders with a soft downy and open face comes out of the shop dressed in brown and positions herself round to the front of the chair.
I actually got to the foot of the bridge where a sign warned of essential work being carried out. I could see a digger over by the old filter beds across on the other side of the canal where the level of the water drops suddenly to divert into the parallel flow of the River Lea creating an affect like a water fall with a constant sound that I like to hear when I am tired. That is by the side of a fig tree dusty from the road above where figs never grow to full size and by an old round lock house where the slates on the roof are beginning to fall. A man sat in the driver seat of that digger with his head far back. It was not moving or making any noise at all. I turn back and go in the other direction past a pub where there was a sign advertising an 18 piece band the weekend after next. But before I got there a man and a woman passed me. The man called back to me asking me if the bridge was closed. "No" I said.
I am passing building constructions, some almost completed, the cladding hugging it from the ground up. In other sections you can look right into the timber framework of the various partitions that are demarcating rooms, corridors, individual living units. Some of the new glass windows look out onto the canal and some look in onto the playing field where the coloured frames of a children's play area can be seen in the distant. They are even dredging the canal, piling up all the rubbish in various cordoned off sections of water for later collection. Down the other way the Olympic Park is under construction. There's a recession everywhere else but in this derelict part of Hackney of pre-war vacant Wharehouses and unexploded bombs the ground is being meticulously cleared and prepared for this housing project, one of many satellites out from the hub of the Olympic village.
I cross the bridge further up. I see that the cows have been put back on the marshes where they have been absent all summer. I collapse by the row of mature trees just down the slope. There is an upturned red traffic cone near to where I sit and some discarded paper. I think about moving the cone or at least standing it up but don't. I lie there like that. On the ragged grass with powdery earth between the tufts. When I open my eyes I hear the trees. My neck is stiff but I manage to twist it behind my left shoulder just enough to catch the flickering motion of leaves curling this way and that on themselves. It is an arangement of light and dark crashing in on one another. Stealing the space in a constant flicker. The wind is picking up. I walk behind the man and dog much further off now at the far end of the field. I turn onto the raised up decking which is a narrow path made of slats and slats of cut and nailed together lengths of wood. These are then covered with chicken wire pulled tight across the slats and also bolted down. I am passing the cows and at a very specific moment when I look over to where one of them is sitting the other one standing their horns appear to lock together. It is as if they were physically connected even though as I walk on these horns again float apart. One of the cows turns it's head.
Bringing back the receding line
A child in a pram who is being rapidly pushed away in the other direction fixes the top of my mango icecream with his eyes. It is beginning to fall, melting over the cone and over my fingers which are holding the cone. As the child moves further and further away he turns himself around in his pram so as not to break his gaze from the top of the icecream. He uses his forefinger to point exactly where he is looking as well. The road is busy. traffic is zooming around the back-log of buses queuing up behind the bus stop. A plant is being wheeled across this road on a trolly by a man who owns two shops, seperatd by that road. He keeps stopping and starting so as to let this car or that flush past him before he continues again. The cars do not stop. They just move around this obstacle wherever it happens to be at the moment they come across it.
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.
Friday, 4 September 2009
On that day
She is worried about litigation. Altough the platform is only two inches off the ground, if anyone should fall, knock into one another, bruise or begin to feel low in themselves, it is the society that will take the blame. They will deal with complaints, use every strategy as a pick-me-up. Soothe and cajole these little known strangers who will suddeny become their charge; their concern. Do they need it? Would you need it? Would you take on that risk? The possibility of a fall. A wrong foot in a moment of absent-mindedness.Who can blame that on this organisation or that. A lack of preparedness. Is it possible to prepare for a fall? Aren't you rather putting it on the agenda in that way? But health and safety is an issue. And as long as they are up on that platform during the demonstration it`s the Society that is liable. So go ahead with the show. Even allow participation. Any kind that is considered necessary. But make sure that people are seen to be going ahead with those moves which are simple for some and difficult for others, in a casual way. A matter of mere coincidence that they should take up with those particular moves all at once. Really a bit of a non-event. Because they are clearly not on the demonstration platform that will remain empty, with a fence all the way around; the keys confiscated from all those present on that day.
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
My eyes hurt
It's windy. No sun . Just a level brightness. That changes remotely by degrees shifting up or down a gear but never creates those simultaneous contrasts of light and dark. No shadow. My eyes hurt. They are small slits against which this white wash crashes down. Beats its way through in to far off capillaries. Angles a way through in which I have no say. It's cruel. And the traffic is cutting up from behind. Riding on the end of that glare. Everyone is a little bit mad today. I can not look at anything directly today. Because if I do, it burns out and turns to white. There's a chemical reaction going on. And rubbing my eyes doesn't help. It just gets further in and when I look again with red smarting eyes everything either bends out impossibly or inwards into an intensity like the pip of a transparent grape. So there is no problem reaching people. I am reeling from one to another, tripping on the flatness of the paving stones that I suppose to be curving up or down. Level ground has never been so dangerous. There is no stalling. No gripping. No traction. Just a slipping through.
I seem to slip through bodies. Things that would phase me- Cars, looks, certain postures, don't. I simply slide by. I am I think getting faster and faster. It's a way to catch up with the light. To out-run it. Or at east to play against it like a wind-surfer. Because crashing into it, swerving against it, creates that missing traction. My body becomes the blotting paper to that streaming white light.
Because I can not look directly into the bulk of bodies, I am noticing the tiny peripheral manoevres. The swaying, tilting of the arms or head. The torsion of the trunk. But it is not seperated out into these parts as the words suggest. It is simply a levering away from a mid-line that is always happening. That is human play. I'm in love with it. The little adjustements that are made. And I manage my approach to coincide with these evolving and strange bodily yearnings that I equally follow. It is a forest where this constant growth towards the light is percievable. Suddenly the speed itself jumps into this filter of minute to minute slowed-down formation. It is like a slow yawn. The shopping trolleys, the moving pedestrains, the vegetables, the bodies. That person, that person. The stillness of the girl looking back. The man behind the counter, weighing the vegetable that fall out and mix back through one another. We are moving in this subteranean under-water life. We can not jump the distance with any kind of sensory device. We have to wait until we are up against one another, in this melee. Falling and catching so that neither entirely happens. Suddenly distance is anticipated and closed and proximity is dotted with holes, spread out and dissipated. Everything happens in good time. People move closer whilst not seeming to.
I seem to slip through bodies. Things that would phase me- Cars, looks, certain postures, don't. I simply slide by. I am I think getting faster and faster. It's a way to catch up with the light. To out-run it. Or at east to play against it like a wind-surfer. Because crashing into it, swerving against it, creates that missing traction. My body becomes the blotting paper to that streaming white light.
Because I can not look directly into the bulk of bodies, I am noticing the tiny peripheral manoevres. The swaying, tilting of the arms or head. The torsion of the trunk. But it is not seperated out into these parts as the words suggest. It is simply a levering away from a mid-line that is always happening. That is human play. I'm in love with it. The little adjustements that are made. And I manage my approach to coincide with these evolving and strange bodily yearnings that I equally follow. It is a forest where this constant growth towards the light is percievable. Suddenly the speed itself jumps into this filter of minute to minute slowed-down formation. It is like a slow yawn. The shopping trolleys, the moving pedestrains, the vegetables, the bodies. That person, that person. The stillness of the girl looking back. The man behind the counter, weighing the vegetable that fall out and mix back through one another. We are moving in this subteranean under-water life. We can not jump the distance with any kind of sensory device. We have to wait until we are up against one another, in this melee. Falling and catching so that neither entirely happens. Suddenly distance is anticipated and closed and proximity is dotted with holes, spread out and dissipated. Everything happens in good time. People move closer whilst not seeming to.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Procession
Bricks collapsing in upon one another inside a window frame. Beyond that frame the pile of bricks mounts up all around clustering around that entrance. I crane my neck out the upstairs window on the bus rudely past the passenger on the inside of me, staying with the bricks for as long as possible. In the background, Alexandra Palace, shimmering on the hill. At the carnival I go down a side-street where multi-coloured animals fill the space between the buildings from pavement to pavement. People are enmeshed within the drapes and foam, preparing, standing this way and that, adjusting head-gear, taking pictures of one another.
I take some pictures and it looks like an animation on my screen with only the glint of eyes hinting through at the real-life aspect. In one animal- some kind of white lizard, there is no head at all. Just the odd motion or swaying from within. Then the head pops out and rolls to one side. A sleepy child sitting on the pavement waiting to begin.
Later in the thrall of people I try to make my way down a side street but am blocked by police. Suddenly that gateway is opened and I am literally pumped down that channel. I want to cross the road and get into the park. The swim of people are pressing in. I step on to the road where the parade is moving but a woman holds me up. I say I want to get to the park. She says I need to go around to the end of the procession. I look out into the distance at a shimmer that fades but never ceases. It just keeps coming. She looks as well. Finally she brushes me through. In the park a man is doing body moves with the children and throwing out hand-fulls of sweets which many eyes watch searing through the sky, then pounce on. A large woman tries to get them too but the kids are on them before she has even bent over. She straightens up again quickly. There's a basin where children run, holding on to the rim so that very suddenly you are face to face with one of them. Then letting go and falling down, turning and running on to the bumps and mounds in the centre they become smaller.
A small boy with a barrel chest, shorts and stick out hair keeps low to the surface feeling out the smoothness with his hands, clambering up a bit, slipping down, falling on to his bottom, turning on to all fours, jumping up, then propelling onwards again until the next slope or curve slows him and positioned now onto one of the small mounds in the centre, he is jumping up and down, working up a rhythm with his whole body raised and lowered in tandem so that a jolt seems to rivet through his frame each time his feet slam into the concrete. When he runs back through to the steep part of the slope a mature woman with blonde hair, a salmon pink ruffled skirt and a white blouse bandaged around her breasts, moves unevenly to the top of the rim and hoists the boy up with his outstretched arms. At the top he jumps up and down once again and then rolls back down on his bottom with his hands to either side of him, and his feet scrambling, slowing him. Another child rolls his trycicle to the rim and when it rolls back down towards him he sits down on it. A skinny girl, older than the others, does cart-wheels back and forwards continuously up on the rim near a group of adults.
The music from the parade is making the park throb. People lie out on every patch of available space. The smells of chicken cooking are everywhere. I eat a piece of cake. The air is full of smoke and as the sun lowers, light cuts through these wafts of haze between the trees, revealing a limb, a hand, a gesture, a breathing stomach a chair-leg or dis-used polystyrene container. A man buys corn where it is being cooked on a large grill. It is put for him into a brown paper bag which he pulls half-way down immediatly as he is walking away so that his mouth can make contact with the sweet burnt corn.
Old people line the edges of the park facing outwards to the gay paraphenelia of the parade. They have deckchairs, easy chairs, stools and hard-backed chairs. Some carry umbrellas and most have elabrate sun-shades attached to their hats. Some of the women wear multi-floral headscarves which hold in place wrap-around glasses. A young black man who is very skinny and wears a neatly pressed checked shirt tucked into his belted jeans and who has on his face heavy rimmed black glasses calls down to some people from the top of the slope next to the concrete basin where the kids are still running and jumping. A thin tall elegant black woman and a fair haired man with blue track suit bottoms and a T.shirt with foreign wording on it make it up the slope holding hands and stand a little distance apart from the other man, with arms around each other.
I go down to the street again where the parade is on-going. There is a man across the road in an immaculate white suite standing by the sporting club. With all the commotion in the street -the comings and goings of trucks, sound-systems and winged men and the red head-dresses of dancing women- I am transfixed by this apparition shimmering in the distance. He is so completely still. In the park again I watch the police using a very specific hand-gesture with an open palm which looks more like an invitation but is used by them almost like a flipper to direct and/or inhibit the flow of people. A young officer with reddened cheeks and his helmet crushed down too far over his narrow head is trying to execute this gesture effectively. He keeps stopping and adjusting an earpiece. As it happens, perhaps because the command keeps changing so regularly, the special flipper gesture floats a certain section through and all of a sudden, almost randomly inhibits the entry of this person or that, who simply flow around the edges of his flipper hand or wait a moment until the order reverses in on itself and helplessly he lets the built up surge flow through. He looks hastily from right to left at his co-workers who are busy becoming gates and levies all of their own. Then suddenly a rigid panel up ahead is formed with layer upon layer of uniformed bodies that seal off the top of the road as the truck rolls to a halt and again the procession is jolted out of any continuous motion- compartmentalised into short "takes". One man in a puffer jacket rheels against the obstruction he faces. He reverses into a backflow through the crowd which he bombards his way through. Time passes and a back-log builds up behind the truck, of people on people. The police now begin to seperate out again streaming out from the centre line like a knot unravelling. The engine of the truck engages.
Across the park by the side of the canal there are black metal steps that spiral up to the level above where the road just past the junction spans across the water. These stairways are blocked off from ground level with a large wooden board tied to either end of the bannisters and resting on the grass. Up above on the bridge a policeman has his back to the black metal gates. People are entering and leavng the park through a tiny slit in the greenery. I pass through as well and stand watching people trailing off along a narrow path in single file next to the water on which some boats are also moving.
Walking back down a side street far from the parade I stop outside a pub for a guinness. There is a woman sitting by the side of the road with her head in her hands. She stays like that and does not change her position all the time I am there. Her hair is over her face. As I pass her later on I see a transparent tube coming out from a square blue hip bag by her side and feeding across her chest into her mouth.
I take some pictures and it looks like an animation on my screen with only the glint of eyes hinting through at the real-life aspect. In one animal- some kind of white lizard, there is no head at all. Just the odd motion or swaying from within. Then the head pops out and rolls to one side. A sleepy child sitting on the pavement waiting to begin.
Later in the thrall of people I try to make my way down a side street but am blocked by police. Suddenly that gateway is opened and I am literally pumped down that channel. I want to cross the road and get into the park. The swim of people are pressing in. I step on to the road where the parade is moving but a woman holds me up. I say I want to get to the park. She says I need to go around to the end of the procession. I look out into the distance at a shimmer that fades but never ceases. It just keeps coming. She looks as well. Finally she brushes me through. In the park a man is doing body moves with the children and throwing out hand-fulls of sweets which many eyes watch searing through the sky, then pounce on. A large woman tries to get them too but the kids are on them before she has even bent over. She straightens up again quickly. There's a basin where children run, holding on to the rim so that very suddenly you are face to face with one of them. Then letting go and falling down, turning and running on to the bumps and mounds in the centre they become smaller.
A small boy with a barrel chest, shorts and stick out hair keeps low to the surface feeling out the smoothness with his hands, clambering up a bit, slipping down, falling on to his bottom, turning on to all fours, jumping up, then propelling onwards again until the next slope or curve slows him and positioned now onto one of the small mounds in the centre, he is jumping up and down, working up a rhythm with his whole body raised and lowered in tandem so that a jolt seems to rivet through his frame each time his feet slam into the concrete. When he runs back through to the steep part of the slope a mature woman with blonde hair, a salmon pink ruffled skirt and a white blouse bandaged around her breasts, moves unevenly to the top of the rim and hoists the boy up with his outstretched arms. At the top he jumps up and down once again and then rolls back down on his bottom with his hands to either side of him, and his feet scrambling, slowing him. Another child rolls his trycicle to the rim and when it rolls back down towards him he sits down on it. A skinny girl, older than the others, does cart-wheels back and forwards continuously up on the rim near a group of adults.
The music from the parade is making the park throb. People lie out on every patch of available space. The smells of chicken cooking are everywhere. I eat a piece of cake. The air is full of smoke and as the sun lowers, light cuts through these wafts of haze between the trees, revealing a limb, a hand, a gesture, a breathing stomach a chair-leg or dis-used polystyrene container. A man buys corn where it is being cooked on a large grill. It is put for him into a brown paper bag which he pulls half-way down immediatly as he is walking away so that his mouth can make contact with the sweet burnt corn.
Old people line the edges of the park facing outwards to the gay paraphenelia of the parade. They have deckchairs, easy chairs, stools and hard-backed chairs. Some carry umbrellas and most have elabrate sun-shades attached to their hats. Some of the women wear multi-floral headscarves which hold in place wrap-around glasses. A young black man who is very skinny and wears a neatly pressed checked shirt tucked into his belted jeans and who has on his face heavy rimmed black glasses calls down to some people from the top of the slope next to the concrete basin where the kids are still running and jumping. A thin tall elegant black woman and a fair haired man with blue track suit bottoms and a T.shirt with foreign wording on it make it up the slope holding hands and stand a little distance apart from the other man, with arms around each other.
I go down to the street again where the parade is on-going. There is a man across the road in an immaculate white suite standing by the sporting club. With all the commotion in the street -the comings and goings of trucks, sound-systems and winged men and the red head-dresses of dancing women- I am transfixed by this apparition shimmering in the distance. He is so completely still. In the park again I watch the police using a very specific hand-gesture with an open palm which looks more like an invitation but is used by them almost like a flipper to direct and/or inhibit the flow of people. A young officer with reddened cheeks and his helmet crushed down too far over his narrow head is trying to execute this gesture effectively. He keeps stopping and adjusting an earpiece. As it happens, perhaps because the command keeps changing so regularly, the special flipper gesture floats a certain section through and all of a sudden, almost randomly inhibits the entry of this person or that, who simply flow around the edges of his flipper hand or wait a moment until the order reverses in on itself and helplessly he lets the built up surge flow through. He looks hastily from right to left at his co-workers who are busy becoming gates and levies all of their own. Then suddenly a rigid panel up ahead is formed with layer upon layer of uniformed bodies that seal off the top of the road as the truck rolls to a halt and again the procession is jolted out of any continuous motion- compartmentalised into short "takes". One man in a puffer jacket rheels against the obstruction he faces. He reverses into a backflow through the crowd which he bombards his way through. Time passes and a back-log builds up behind the truck, of people on people. The police now begin to seperate out again streaming out from the centre line like a knot unravelling. The engine of the truck engages.
Across the park by the side of the canal there are black metal steps that spiral up to the level above where the road just past the junction spans across the water. These stairways are blocked off from ground level with a large wooden board tied to either end of the bannisters and resting on the grass. Up above on the bridge a policeman has his back to the black metal gates. People are entering and leavng the park through a tiny slit in the greenery. I pass through as well and stand watching people trailing off along a narrow path in single file next to the water on which some boats are also moving.
Walking back down a side street far from the parade I stop outside a pub for a guinness. There is a woman sitting by the side of the road with her head in her hands. She stays like that and does not change her position all the time I am there. Her hair is over her face. As I pass her later on I see a transparent tube coming out from a square blue hip bag by her side and feeding across her chest into her mouth.
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