Crossing From the Tate Modern to St Paul's

"I enjoy the walk from home to the office and in the evening from the office back home. It takes about three-quarters of an hour." 

- Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to Theo van Gogh, London, 30 April 1874

"The Lord have mercy on those who weaken and stand in the middle; only at the end, the only salvation is at the end of the road."

 - From 'The Fratricides' by Nikos Kazantzakis

In the very middle of the bridge, between St Paul's and the Tate Modern, you find the peanut sellers, gum painters, fake art-dealers, wedding photographers, TV crews, and tourist groups. Walking towards them from the Southbank the dome of St Paul's hangs in the distance, the wind comes off the river a little, and looking down towards the water you see a long stretch of mud, brick, and dirty sand. On some days the river is sludgy, on others it’s dotted brightly with waves. Sometimes, when the tide is low, little figures comb the shoreline.

The shoreline is a kind of no-man's land and the bridge is a kind of no-man's land too. Maybe it's interesting to think of these places as being no-places, suspended between museum and church. Maybe it's interesting too that we name bridges. To the right is Tower bridge, to the left, Blackfriars and this is the Millennium Bridge which, unlike the others, tells you nothing about where you are going or where you have just been. Perhaps it should have been named after St Paul. It is in these middle-places that time slows and magic sometimes happens. Sunsets are middle places and so are sunrises. In a way they are little commutes between ideas of what is definite.

Bridges have something of the magical commute about them and though St Paul watches over this one there is no 'Saul on the road to Damascus' stuff here. The surface of the bridge glints and shimmers in the sun without requiring an epiphany. Standing in the middle with the little gum paintings and trying not to get in the way of people’s photos, it's enough that St Paul's, beautiful with its white dome and little flourishes of gold, is here as the back drop to a journey home....

... Sunlight catches a gold statue on the roof of St Paul’s... A breeze blows steam from the peanut vendor’s cart... I’d meant to say something about spires, about the shard being unfinished at the top, about St Paul's and other buildings including intricate designs and sculptures so high up that only a god would be able to see them: this seems important somehow... but as I wander down onto the opposite bank, with St Paul's school, the breeze, and little mirror ball sculptures in front of me, I try to remember a poem by Wallace Stevens instead. How does it go? What does it mean? I'm not sure but it ends something like:

...The boots of the men clump
On the boards of the bridge.
The first white wall of the village
Rises through fruit-trees.
Of what was it I was thinking?
So the meaning escapes.

The first white wall of the village . . .
The fruit-trees . . .

Metaphors of a Magnifico

- Wallace Stevens

The Lea Valley

Now that the blackberries are starting to bloom, all the hedgerows are coming to life. 

A path leads away from the Lea Bridge Road, winding through thickets that catch tin cans, crisp packets and pieces of paper, weaving its way like a gentle river into Hackney marshes. The traffic noise calms to a slow simmer, and it's as though a large animal has been tamed or grown tired. Magpies cackle in the trees, Blackbirds sing. Bindweed climbs across a bank of nettles throwing up white flowers like tiny porcelain bowls. Bright green parakeets dash between leaves. A tree sends out a covering of seeds that fall upon the footpath and the brambles beside it like a thick layer of cotton wool. If my googling is correct, this is the Black Poplar, or Water Poplar, and said to be the most endangered hardwood tree in the UK. Water Poplars can live up to 200 years. 100 Years ago there was the water works, the filter beds, and pump systems. 200 years ago there were the trees, the animals, and the Lea river moving slowly over the marshes. 

Though the path is concrete and fenced on either side by black iron rails, there is still a sense of civilisation unravelling into wilderness. This is a landscape of birds, and wind, and trees, and tall grass. Only this giant red metal bridge crossing the river, blocking almost all view of it reminds you that the landscape has been shaped by humans. Beyond the bridge wild flowers move in the breeze. The land opens out into a huge field with rows and rows of white goal posts.

The path turns behind a row of Silver Birch to avoid the football pitches. Now the view is small again and the birds return, calling to one another. In the longer grass and in the hedges there are spaces were animals have made their own paths.

Behind the Lea Valley Riding Centre

Following a path across Millfields park, behind the ice rink and on through the riding centre. The path crosses the Lea River before continuing over the train tracks and on towards Walthamstow.

Sailors´ Village without sailors.

I would like to talk to you about these sailors.

Well, at least I like thinking they are sailors, although they're not close to a seashore, if they have ever been close to one.

Their houses made of wood and their facades painted in colours. Their roofs raise up to the stormy skies like the crest of waves, breaking against imaginary figureheads.

Every morning I cross their village.

The wind blows around its corners, and fills its alleys with brown leaves and blue carrier bags sailing against the whirlwinds.

The cables hit the mast of the antenas at a continuous metallic pace.

Never I have seen kids on the front yard decks, the swing in the playground only rocks its own shadow.

Every morning, alone.

I look for eyes behind the net curtains or whistles coming from the slot of an open window. Doors open behind my steps, and close instantly when I turn my head to them.

My eyes hang from a sudden camera zoom.

Nothing happens at the sailors' village without sailors, without boats.

Collecting Dandelions

In the summer of 1985 my Mum and I went for a walk through the country lanes close to our house.

It was warm and dry and we had an idea that if we collected flowers from the side of the road we could later press them into a notebook.

I say 'we' but it must have been her idea really. Perhaps it was something she had done as a child.

I would have been four years old.

I remember the fields being yellow.

In the banks of grass beside the roads we found dandelions, buttercups, and bright blue flowers that I don't know the name of.

          

We must have walked in a loop. Perhaps we cut across fields, although we would have a pushchair with us so that seems unlikely.

I think I remember the fields being quiet though I'm sure cars passed at intervals, becoming louder as they approached and then quickly dying away.

The idea of silent yellow fields and cars mixes in my mind with a kind of early summer morning smell and the sound of blackbirds.

But these must be from later summers. The smell of the shade behind the house with the sun baking down and cutting the garden in two. Blackbirds outside a bedroom window in the early evening.

Did I sellotape the flowers into the Transformers notebook? I think so; look at the way the tape has been torn.

Also, the flowers were fixed into position with the book upside down and back to front. I recognise my own work here.

Did we walk back together or did I sleep in the pushchair? Were the flowers carried in my mum's handbag or did I want to hold onto them?

We must have stuck them down after lunch, placing a heavy object on top of the book to press the flowers into position.

We would have shown them to my Dad that evening.

         

The Sleepwalking Soul

Cada cuerpo con su deseo
y el mar el frente.
Cada lecho con su naufragio
y los barcos al horizonte.
- Eugenio Montejo

For a swimmer, making his way into the sea
the waves are a physical reminder of time.
The space between each wave is calculated,
the body carefully positioned to ride over
or glide through each wave. Here time equals action.
The trough of each wave is enjoyed; the heat of the sun,
the coolness of the water, the taste of salt, a yacht seeming
not to move on the horizon, disappearing behind a wave, and the next,
and another, until he emerges triumphant into the tranquility of clear water.

The horizon is one long
stripe of blue, looking back land stretches out
bisecting the blue of the sky and the
blue of the sea and it is here
that the soul begins its drift;
gently and without announcement.

The beach may be empty or it
may appear as a pointillist landscape
dotted with the coloured bags and towels
of other bathers. He will search for his own,
scouring the beach for private landmarks,
tracing the memory of his steps
across the sand down to the shore.

If he manages to locate his towel, it will be far
from where he expected to find it.
The sensation is of a slippage of time.
There are no footprints to mark the journey.
It is as though he has moved between time zones
and though he knows that a day has been lost,
that he must adjust his watch, the body refuses to believe it;
the disjuncture between the reality of place and the sensation of place being too great.

A quiet acceptance washes in.
He can't point to a when or a how but he knows
that a change has occurred over which he has had no control,
or if he had, he has come to realise it too late.

And so he feels the heat of the sun,
the coolness of the water against his skin
and he makes his way, slowly, allowing the waves
to propel him, back toward the beach.

Random Impressions 1

I tried and failed about ten times to write this as one coherent piece so I'm going to list things as a series of jump cuts instead:

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The road between Blackhorse road station and Tottenham. I walked along there hoping to see the reservoirs but it was so misty that I couldn't see more than a few metres past the fence. At intervals fishermen and geese appear through the fog.

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A bridge over the canal in Tottenham has a plaque explaining that it was built in the first year of the great war. This and the mist makes me think of the poet Edward Thomas. 

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Walking past Ghanaian churches hidden amongst the warehouses close to the canal in Tottenham. A taxi driver confirms that the churches are all Ghanaian but that he is Nigerian. Once, when living in Lagos, one of Fela Kuti's wives had been his landlady and he was a regular visitor to 'The Shrine'.

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Two ducks swimming in a small stream banked by rubbish.

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A yellow tree raining leaves down onto the pavement close to the Lea Bridge roundabout.

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The Downs pub has a sign which says that in 1870 the first cycle club in the UK had their inaugural meeting there. Opposite, the Downs are empty, cold, and windswept.