On A Winter's Afternoon

Our son was asking me so many questions on the train I had run out of answers by the time we reached our destination. As a further token of respect for the artist, I had disappeared with the children into the centre of the capital with some tokens of another kind to spend on clothes. Our daughter was serene throughout, enjoying her brother's inquiring, and watched everyone and everything as the grey clouds and threatened rain competed later with the sales and aimlessly wandering couples. We talked about the artist as we walked, each agreeing she was really committed to what she was doing. It is a curious but compelling thing, the artist locked like a hermit into her work like this. Any time spent without something to work on must be hellish for her and though she leaps like a rare grasshopper from one blade of work to the other she always seems to make it across. Presently the large green blade she has landed on is swaying slightly, but she is safe, her strong paws clamped gecko-like on the flat but expanded part of the leaf that is above the sheath and away from the stem. Is art insecurity or security? I suppose it is a mixture of both, though to the children, I suspect, it still appears as natural as breathing. But I am certainly aware it involves for the artist pain as well as pleasure. At one point while still walking we passed a large group of people chanting against the tyranny of their country, their foreign voices filling the street with chatter. As we drew closer, we walked faster, though the children at no stage appeared scared. When we returned home the artist had been working for over four hours. She didn't say anything after giving everyone, including me, a kiss and warm embrace, but I could tell she was more than a little curious about what I thought of the work to date on the new piece. I was deeply impressed by the work and intimidated by it too.

The Buffer Zone

Today the artist has been looking after our daughter as the last globules of our daughter's cold evaporates into thin air and the excuse to stay at home begins to run out. The artist has also been leaping from piece to piece on the wall like a grasshopper from blade to blade of grass. In fact the flash of light from the nearly completed piece on the right is now beginning to come out on the piece to the left. (Art as an ecosystem surely.) Its glow, like the cold doing the neighbourhood rounds, is infectious. Meanwhile I have been out hunting, as in the activity of looking thoroughly in order to find work, and one of the advantages of today's hunt was in seeing an old friend again. Isn't it gratifying when those you have always liked appear to be doing well and yet still uphold the notions of truth you all clutched so handsomely when young? We discussed children - his are much older - and the 'abyss', which he warned with an experienced smile confronts many a boy aged thirteen. 'And three-quarters,' he added. He kindly bought lunch and listened to my underdeveloped ideas as our waitress ensured we were replete. I was more interested in my companion than I was in myself. It wasn't that we were trying catch up on everything; it was more that we were tackling the present with a kind of renewed vigour. At one point later over coffee as my host stared out at the tiny principality of green in front of his office, we discussed the absence of the buffer-zone between you and death when your parents die and you are still very much a child, which is to say 'pre-abyss'. I was still thinking about this on the underground train later when I saw an elderly woman who immediately reminded me of someone. She looked lost but was putting on a brave face and like the person she was reminding me of, she grinned perseveringly and was well presented. Eventually, readjusting her white-knuckle grip on her handbag, she discovered she was on the wrong train. She licked her lips, nervously. (Her accent was from the north and you could tell she was a long way from home.) When the man she was asking directions from told her to get out at the next station, and left it rather brutally at that, I took my cue and stepped alongside her and ushered her with a smile to the correct train. She reminded me of the aunt who with my grandmother tried to bring me up without the buffer-zone.