Metallic mauves, oilfilm greens and blues, sombre spectra
Even during our hiatus days, time out of mind, when we escaped, however briefly, westward, I was distracted by intimations of erasure
We’d picnic on a perfect little patch of meadow, hardly bigger than a modest garden lawn, just off the clifftop path; and I’d lie, almost catatonic, with the side of my head pillowed on a bank of turf, staring out to sea.
Some days it was almost Aegean in the intensity of its colours: clear glassy greens and greys in the mass of inshore water, surging between rock channels at the cliff base; darker browny-greens farther from the shore where shoals of reef weed swayed close to the surface; then deeper blues, purples. Further out towards the horizon, aquamarines and turquoises.
But then instead I’d find myself staring into a dense weave of long grass, the last tangled fringe between our green ledge and airy nothingness. And I suppose I began to be overwhelmed by an infinite richness. The grasses alone – there were hundreds of different varieties, from broadblades to tall, barley-like ears; long sheaves and fallen hanks of unkempt hair; wisps of gossamer and spiky porcupine quills, like chives. The flowers too, previously unseen but now becoming etched into your consciousness, hyper real in their intense detail. Baby ferns, buttercups, tiny blue flowers almost as small as pinheads, purple flowers on twisty haulms, yellow starbursts, mauve miniatures like Parma violets. And the whole dense mass alive with insects. Lacy winged things. Ladybirds. Pale winged butterflies alighting delicately and flitting on like rose petals strewn on an erratic breeze.
And then I’d say a thing like: “It was a golf course at one time, did you know that?”