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This is from my old place. I had been sleeping in this room for exactly a year
The room is like a cell. I strongly sense how arbitrary it is that I'm here rather than any other room.*
In fact, since I left my parents house over thirty years ago, I have felt this about where I live: the immense arbitrariness of where I am. Leaving home can be an exile or an escape, or just what you must do as a mature person. But home, by definition, is necessarily a place that can't feel arbitrary.
I believe these feelings of rootlessness are common among the children of immigrants. Their parents made a choice to move. But the children they have in the new country are neither truly of the new country nor of the country of their parents. The children feel detached from the country they are growing up in, but are not really part of the countries of their parents either. They're in a cultural limbo. Sometimes such children are referred to as Two Culture Kids. They are often the offspring of military or missionary families.
I think I unconsciously chose the role of landscape painter because that way I could examine and insist on, my presence in the world.
My Sleep
I wanted to write about my sleep, about what might be going on there, because I haven't had a dream for a long time, not for years, and i guess that might be interpreted as the death or the dying of my unconscious mind. Perhaps, you might argue, I've evolved into this super- conscient being, whose mental workings have no mystery. But the decisions i daily make or fail to make suggest you would be wrong.
I also wanted to tell you about my bed, but then I started to think about how it would be to see a photograph of myself sleeping and how creepy that would be. To see myself lying asleep would be to see someone vulnerable to attack, their body unwilled, corpse like. Part of what makes that thought appalling is, I confess, that it has a glassy appeal as at times I do indeed wish I could rise out of my own being and see myself a corpse, spent through. That isn't a constant feeling, but can come when life seems wretched. But such trains of thought should be controlled as they may lead to rather unconstructive attitudes to life's problems
One thing about sleep although its a physical necessity, you can't force it, it has to be voluntary. The are are two of you, one that declares its bed time. He has to make it as easy for the other part of you, a younger part, wilful and strange, to concede, to sleep. Sometimes the other part is very easy and goes to sleep. But if they aren't accepting you can't force it.
You choose where to lie, probably a strung or foam padding covered by a sheet of cotton, with one or two further items of raised padding to support your head called pillows.Then, there is a blanket or some sort of cover and you assume a position lying, covered by cloth. Ideally only you head or one arm pokes out of that envelopment.
You're in there, your head rests on the pillow, then you close your eyes and try to ease from your thoughts letting any conflictuous moments from the day float away, and you push away also any hopes or aspirations so you are humble, desire free, and your passage into sleep can proceed without rupture.
If you think about a girl or some sexy thing then it is better if it is a memory of a successful encounter than a ambition, or you will become quite hopeless thinking about how you might contrive an apparently chance meeting outside the tube stop and where that encounter might lead.
But if that process, that embarkation is overlong and you are still waiting for sleep after a time it is better to return to the state of will and rise, do ironing or arrange your postage stamp collection, some quiet monotonous task. Myself, have arranged all my bookshelves according to colour of book spine.
The sleep I want is first a dense, heavy, almost asphyxiating. I want to be taken by a landscape by Poussin. I want serpentine paths passing giant oaks and a lazy fisherman sleeping, i want farl green forest and a stillness broken only by a wisp of smoke from a dying campfire.
I want to be free of the need to make choices, to accept everything. I don't want to know that I might return, I want vastness, lostness , a place without or decision or shame.
This photo was taken about six months ago before I moved.
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The avenue I walked down
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I came on Sunday.
I wasn't feeling too well. I had a sad feeling, I felt pointless too. The bad part of Sunday, the mooching around, the irritation, the boredom.
I had a thought about how thirty years ago I had the same feeling. You might think that one's emotional life would develop over time, so that such negative states no longer affect one. But it seems to me part of the essential misery of life that one never really escapes the treadmill, even after learning that one is within it.
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I had passed this avenue on the fast road, an exquisite road with endless, tall dreamlike Scots pine, rising with such heavenly aspiration anyone would feel enchanted there. When I passed this entrance, I always thought, " oh you must stop there one day." I must have had that thought over three hundred times.
And so, I went there with the Lumix camera, a lovely black metal thing that fits snugly in the hand.
From this entrance you follow a track through woodland, and then, you meet a fenced parking area and a kiosk with sign with bold acronyms, telling you that it pertains to a work-based social organisation of some sort.
Then, over a sandy path you reach a fine narrow beach and the Atlantic.
I felt, when I met these facilities somewhat like a trespasser, a bit uneasy. The mood in Brazil has become less laid back lately, even in touristy areas. There`s a sense of suspicion that I feel wasn't present when I came here 16 years ago, and this affects people's behaviours in these areas- you don`t have the sort of ready conversations that you used to- I`m sure I`m not imagining that. Though I must say that the only person I met, a woman with two small children, smiled and said hello in a pleasant way, a way that made me feel all right.
Oh how strange that my sentiments might be moved by such an easy thing as a lady`s smile? What is the point of thinking at all, when ones feelings jump and rise or fall with the predictability of a pin ball on a warped board?
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This is a shell I found lying on the sand-
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I'm not going to show a picture of the ocean. Imagine it yourself.
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As I drove off, I heard the Velvet Underground song ¬Ocean¬.
I can find two versions of the song, one on an early Lou Reed Album and the other on a posthumous released Velvet Underground compilation called VU. The Velvet Underground version is earlier and more surreal. The song that I heard in my head was the Reed`s solo take and is also intense and troubled. But it is more coherent, with scenes of drowning and desperation, of castles and towers and warlocks - rather Shakesperean. Whether the lyrics have directed meanings or are meant as imagistic poetry is not clear from the commentaries I have found, but I suspect the former.
However, it is argued by David Caune on Quora that Malcolm is a reference to the son of Henry Melville, author of Moby Dick. Malcolm`s suicide, a result it is argued, was the result of violent abuse from his father. Lou Reed was subjected to Electroconvulsive Shock Therapy, an attempt by his parents to control his homosexual tendencies, and Caune sees in the song a refence to the trauma that this treatment caused him, which he parallels with that of Melville's son.
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These two paintings have been selected for the S.S.A. annual exhibition in Edinburgh.
It runs from 17 December 2022 to 10 January, 2023.
I will also send in three paintings for their 30 x 30 cm rack.
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My walk to the sea, part 4/4
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I often walk to the sea but I rarely spend much time there. I find that when I`m at the sea I feel aimless. In fact, don't really find the environment enjoyable. It is bleak, and I perceive futility in this sort of leisure space which I feel is best suited to persons seeking recovery from illnesses, or caring for small children.
Actually, I`d go further- the expanse of sea fills me with dread. And the views don`t offer much for conversation, either. They just...are.
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This was the end of my walk.
When I got back, I felt quite good, happy in a mild way. The good feeling lasted all day, despite some bad news about a traffic fine and my driving license, which will probably be suspended for three months.
I will do a set documenting the return journey one day. But I am not sure when. But, to leave you on a cliffhanger, I don`t usually return the same way I go...
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My walk to the sea, part 3/4: bollards and/or vases
I reach the commercial street that runs parallel to the sea. Here, the atmosphere is livelier, with shops selling items for tourists as well as restaurants, clothing shops and local services. My attention was drawn by these vases, which I find a little bizarre. I think what is odd about them is how much care has been taken to make and maintain them, yet how incongruous their constituent elements are.
They are so very purposefully constructed yet so unnecessary. They do make an interesting contrast to the abandoned items seen in previous photos. Do they, perhaps, have an erotic significance?
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These stand, six in total, flanking a parking area serving a dental surgery, among other services. There is also a lady rummaging in a bag. There are many women in Canasvieiras. Perhaps women like Canasvieiras more than men? Or perhaps the men go away somewhere during the day, to work, and only come back late at night after dark, arriving unseen?
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