Haibun
Ledger
I had a
splitting headache - self-inflicted, I confess - the
result of a chance encounter with old friends and the
consumption of large amounts of a cocktail known as a 'Portreath
Harbour', which, if my memory can be trusted, is a
dangerous admixture of Baileys Irish Liqueur and Creme
De Menthe. If you've ever been to Portreath at low tide
and encountered the noxious fumes which emanate from the
harbour basin, then you'll understand the reference.
The next morning found me in a sorry state, suffering
from one of those those sick-making, migraine-inducing
maladies which seem to worsen rather than mitigate with
the passage of time. As ever it came with the
concomitant sense of impending doom and of the futility
and emptiness of existence. Indeed, I could almost feel
the breath of air disturbed by Damocles' sword as it
swayed back and forth over my naked and throbbing brow,
suspended only, so it seemed, by the finest and most
fragile of hairs.
I felt that a little physical exercise and fresh air
might prove efficacious and so I decided to take a walk
along the coast into St.Ives.
It was a gleaming early Autumn day with that clarity of
air that only comes with that time of year, in which
even the most distant and tenuous of clouds seemed to
possess hard and clearly defined edges. As I walked, I
tried to recall the phrase that Churchill had coined for
alcohol-induced depression, but for the life of me, it
proved evasive.
I wandered through the town's little streets crowded
with its brightly painted cottages but failed to find
the usual charm in them; even the cry of the gulls
seemed painful and jarring like fingernails down the
blackboard of my soul.
The surf which unfurled across Porthmeor Beach was
blindingly bright almost like that of the sparks which
splinter from the tip of an arc-welder's torch.
Cursing the fact that I hadn't had the foresight to wear
dark glasses, I escaped into the the relative
tranquility of the Tate Gallery.
Inside was an exhibition charting the birth of
modernism. I spent an hour drifting around the gallery
gazing at the blue-period Picassos which rubbed
shoulders with Mondrians, Wallaces and some darker
examples of Pollack's drip-painting phase.
What really caught my eye, however, was a piece by
Robert Ryman called 'Ledger' - something that I had read
about but had never seen.
As I stared into it's almost translucent blankness,
feeling somewhat soothed by its oddly compelling neutral
space, a strange and arresting sight met my eyes: a
bluebottle, soft and swollen in its late Summer plenty,
alighted on the top right hand corner of the canvas,
and, taking its time, pausing occasionally to rub
together its feathery front legs, wandered in a
seemingly aimless path to the near centre of the
painting, looking, to all intents, like the aerial view
of a polar explorer travelling through a vast and frozen
landscape. There it paused, quivered nervously for a
while and deposited, like a bold full-stop in the centre
of an otherwise blank sheet of paper, a perfectly round
fly speck.
It's work done, the blue bottle buzzed its wings in glee
and departed.
Giggling loudly, I decided that it was It was time to
leave culture to its own devices. As I walked towards
the exit and shaded my eyes against the sunlight, I
suddenly remembered Churchill's words:
hangover—
the 'black dog'
crosses my path
