Memories
When you asked me what my favourite object was — do you remember? Last week, when we were walking on the beach. I had to stop and think very carefully. My immediate reaction, given our present location, was to say, ‘Oh, the carapace of a crab washed up on the shoreline. Or maybe the collection of pale mauve sea urchins which I carefully extricated from a tangled pile of kelp hurled onto the sand after a wild storm at sea. They are now artistically arranged in that old faience bread basket on the coffee table at the back of the house. I think you know it well — we’ve had coffee right there so many times over the years. Everyone who sees it says, ‘Oh, how exquisite,’; ‘So delicate, so fragile,’; ‘How ever did they survive the raging ocean?’
I am acquisitive by nature. I like allowing my mind to hover over the things I have collected and displayed around me over the past fifty years. I find myself thinking of items that have given me pleasure, either because they are beautiful, or they bring back vivid images. Those images are the small commas in my life, intersecting time and memory.
This piece of lacquer work may be just a simple bracelet to you, but to me it is an entire day spent in the back streets of Bagan, Myanmar. Or that pebble — yes, the one just there near the orange vase. When I look at that single perfect river pebble, I see clear water at the edge of a lush forest. I am looking down through the water to the river bed, and on the river bed there are thousands of these ancient smooth stones. In another year, this tranquil spot will be deep under the Yangtze River dam and the pebbles consigned to murky darkness. No light will seek them out to reveal their beauty and history. But this one I saved.
How skillfully I have avoided mentioning that one talisman, hidden on the bottom shelf of the painted cupboard in the back room, its significance, and how my life changed forever on that hot windless day so long ago. That day, and everything that took place, is embedded in those few remaining threads of linen. I wonder how an object, like that fragment of cloth, becomes a memory. Or is the memory the object? How does an inanimate form take on an intrinsic energy, even when hidden away in the soft gloom of a rarely used piece of furniture?
I would like to share my story with you. Let’s sit outside, at the table near the lemon tree. Shall I make tea?