On one side of the river was a small park, with its park
warden (this is many years ago). On the other side were large warehouses, their
names fading away, the water oily and bobbing with discardedness. We’d run
along the pathway in the park clattering railings and one of us experienced a
fear then obscure which perhaps now clarifies as having to do with the fading names on
the warehouses. As dark came down we were told we must leave the park and we
crossed at the zebra crossing opposite the Greek café. There my friend Georgios
lived. We were both 7, he’d wipe the snot from his nose on the sleeve of his
pullover. Imagine how lonely God must be with everything that will ever be said
having been said.
Poor Tom’s a-cold. We’d put leaves into his mouth and abandon him sleeping on a bench overlooking the warehouses and the river. Suddenly the
names on the warehouses blazed out with the fire of trumpets. While Tom began
to fade to blend with the twilight. We sat in Georgios’s father’s café and
drank English tea. Then I ran down the road and kicked my football up against
the walls of the corridor where our flat was.
Janice would stand in the school room and scream at the
teacher. Once I hid with Janice back of the prefabs behind the school and we
planned to run away. But I was playing: I was in no need of running away.
Janice wouldn’t learn the alphabet; once a sparrow fluttered down and landed on
her left wrist. With infinite kindness she waited for it to take its rest and
fly away.
When there were no more languages, only a single, vividly
fading image projected onto each of our eyes, into our throats, then we knew we
were grown ups. The Romantic nostalgia for childhood is a product of this
oscillating vividness / fading. One resistance is to realise it is possible to
be afraid anywhere, anytime. Not just in the location or according to the
temporality of their Decision. Let them know that fear makes you capable of
anything. “Constable of course did not believe that his subjects were nothing;
he meant only that earlier artists would have considered them so.” (1)
(1) From Peter Galassi, Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography (MOMA Catalogue, 1981)
(1) From Peter Galassi, Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography (MOMA Catalogue, 1981)
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