Art Pact 13
Here is what I like to do in circumstances like these: I like to imagine myself on a desert island somewhere. There is a low sun, a half-circle of flaming red and orange slowing sinking into the sea. The top half of it is a perfect arc, a glowing ember against the sky. The bottom half a rippling crimson and yellow patch of brightness that stretches out into a path across the surface of the sea. It's a still sea, but not so still that there aren't visible wavelets texturing its azure surface. The sun that has fallen into it, the most recent but not the last of many such suns, has imparted its warmth to the sea so that were I to step into it I should feel a soft warmth washing around my ankles, a pleasant temperature that is so balanced with my blood that it renders the water almost intangible.
There in the shallows, were I to wade that far, I imagine that I would find brightly coloured fish, clowns and cichlids flitting back and forth, diving at some invisible plankton and rushing through the rainbow fronds of anemones and corals that had colonised the beach edge. Further in, skulking red crabs and varicoloured shrimps, and iridescent squid that flash their gaudy signs at me and jet away to find some more appropriate prey. In the far distance, the blue gliding shapes of sharks beneath the surface, and in the far distance a pod of dolphins breaching the surface in clouds of joyous spray.
I imagine that I return to the littoral zone, my wet feet soon clad in socks made of the brilliant white sand, finer than icing sugar, which surrounds the island. Here are trinkets washed up by the tides - cowries polished clean by the relentless action of the ocean, shinier and more rich than any varnished specimen in a souvenir vendor's booth, the bleached bones of a whale, the purse-shaped eggs of some unfortunate would-be-mother-shark. Albatrosses and Petrels watch my perambulation warily, but this is a place where they can imagine no harm coming to them, an island free of upstart mammals and unsullied by human waste or appetite. I watch one of the gigantic wanderers flap its wings, stretching them for some long journey around the globe. Grey and white feathers flash in the low evening sun. If this were another dream I might wish that I could go with him - perhaps, in my dreams, I even could. But in these circumstances the island is not somewhere to escape from, but to.
In my imagination I would walk back up the beach, to the border between the green and white. There the huge fronds of unidentifiable plants, the rough-ringed trunks of archaic trees. The beach is the no-man's land separating two bounties - the rich cornucopia of the sea and the limitless fruit-basket of the jungle. I would choose a fruit - perhaps a mango, perhaps some jungle orange, the size of a man's fist (no, the size of something more peaceful) and bite into it. The fresh air and constant sun would have made the flavour of the fruit so intense that it would feel almost as though it were a sound, a sight, a feeling at once. I would take another, walk slowly to the middle of the beach, and lay myself down gently on my back. There I imagine myself staying for the night. That is what I like to do in circumstances like these.
So that is what I did, while the blows rained down on me. I walked on an island beach, watching the setting sun and feeling life and tranquility all around me. I ate fruits so fresh and full of taste that if I were to eat one in real life I suspect I should hunger for nothing else for all of my days. I lay in warm sand and looked up into the gathering darkness at the rich white drift of the milky way, and smiled at the moon that hung above me. When I am asked in the future to recall the events of the day, that is what I will be able to describe. The other thing, the punches, the kicks, all remains a mystery to me. I know they happened - perhaps I could even tell you how many of them I took, and who they were provided by. But these are dry details, unimportant bean counting and the withered husks of prose. Something to put into a spreadsheet, not something to remember. The island I remember.
There in the shallows, were I to wade that far, I imagine that I would find brightly coloured fish, clowns and cichlids flitting back and forth, diving at some invisible plankton and rushing through the rainbow fronds of anemones and corals that had colonised the beach edge. Further in, skulking red crabs and varicoloured shrimps, and iridescent squid that flash their gaudy signs at me and jet away to find some more appropriate prey. In the far distance, the blue gliding shapes of sharks beneath the surface, and in the far distance a pod of dolphins breaching the surface in clouds of joyous spray.
I imagine that I return to the littoral zone, my wet feet soon clad in socks made of the brilliant white sand, finer than icing sugar, which surrounds the island. Here are trinkets washed up by the tides - cowries polished clean by the relentless action of the ocean, shinier and more rich than any varnished specimen in a souvenir vendor's booth, the bleached bones of a whale, the purse-shaped eggs of some unfortunate would-be-mother-shark. Albatrosses and Petrels watch my perambulation warily, but this is a place where they can imagine no harm coming to them, an island free of upstart mammals and unsullied by human waste or appetite. I watch one of the gigantic wanderers flap its wings, stretching them for some long journey around the globe. Grey and white feathers flash in the low evening sun. If this were another dream I might wish that I could go with him - perhaps, in my dreams, I even could. But in these circumstances the island is not somewhere to escape from, but to.
In my imagination I would walk back up the beach, to the border between the green and white. There the huge fronds of unidentifiable plants, the rough-ringed trunks of archaic trees. The beach is the no-man's land separating two bounties - the rich cornucopia of the sea and the limitless fruit-basket of the jungle. I would choose a fruit - perhaps a mango, perhaps some jungle orange, the size of a man's fist (no, the size of something more peaceful) and bite into it. The fresh air and constant sun would have made the flavour of the fruit so intense that it would feel almost as though it were a sound, a sight, a feeling at once. I would take another, walk slowly to the middle of the beach, and lay myself down gently on my back. There I imagine myself staying for the night. That is what I like to do in circumstances like these.
So that is what I did, while the blows rained down on me. I walked on an island beach, watching the setting sun and feeling life and tranquility all around me. I ate fruits so fresh and full of taste that if I were to eat one in real life I suspect I should hunger for nothing else for all of my days. I lay in warm sand and looked up into the gathering darkness at the rich white drift of the milky way, and smiled at the moon that hung above me. When I am asked in the future to recall the events of the day, that is what I will be able to describe. The other thing, the punches, the kicks, all remains a mystery to me. I know they happened - perhaps I could even tell you how many of them I took, and who they were provided by. But these are dry details, unimportant bean counting and the withered husks of prose. Something to put into a spreadsheet, not something to remember. The island I remember.
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