Ecuador, Hacienda San Agustin de Callo (09/06/15)
/A Room Within a Room Within
The things of this world
exist, they are;
you can’t refuse them.
To bear and not to own;
to act and not lay claim;
to do the work and let it go:
for just letting it go
is what makes it stay.
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
(trans. by Ursula K. Le Guin)
Winter, 2020
A second lockdown looms. I have travelled down from a farm in Scotland to visit my grandparents in Stanley: an old coal-mining town in North East England. For the next six weeks, ‘home’ will be my father’s childhood bedroom. Now a guest room. The four walls of the room are covered in Artex. At the entrance is a light cord. A small corridor of carpet with a wardrobe to the left. Sat on top of its wooden frame is a felt green trilby hat with a peacock’s feather; a large wooden fishing boat next to it. Above the bed hangs a painting of a naked woman lying face down. Her sand-coloured body disappearing into sand-coloured paper.
Other objects in the room include a wooden bedside table. A red piece of cloth on top. A cylindrical reading lamp. A box of tissues. An unopened notebook. Along the right wall is a south-facing window with a laundry basket beneath it. Towels stacked on its wicker lid. Faded pinks, beiges and blues. Next to this is a small radiator. White wallpaper behind it.
During school holidays I would sleep in this room. My father and I sharing the same bed. Light from a single street lamp coming in through the chinks in the blinds.
Bamburgh Castle, 09/07/20
I follow my father’s footprints. The sickle curve of the dunes. Waves lap up the bubbling sun. Froth making an island of my rubber-sealed feet. Bamburgh castle ahead. Like a mollusc that crawled out of the sea, it sits high above the dunes on a rock. Clouds drift in the wet skin of sand. A skein of geese flies south.
Further along the beach, we sit and look out at the waves. The Farne Islands like a Fata Morgana in the distance. Sailing boats bob in the swell. I think of the sand-coloured woman, disappearing into sand-coloured paper. Hips curved like the dunes. Her naked body as smooth as a pebble. Hair tangled like a piece of bladderwrack.
Is this who the miniature men of the wooden boat were looking for? Is this their bounty? The sea captain in his yellow anorak. Wind embalmed in wood. The miniature lobster pots glued to the deck. The sail drawn taught to the mast. I wonder if you would float? If the structure would hold in the saltwater waves. As the ocean comes in, bleeding through the cracks…
I collect sand in my hands. Watch the body of the sand-coloured woman disappear between my fingers. What have I thrown out to keep myself afloat? The men below deck fill their buckets with water. Like a purveyor of the past, I try to create an inventory of all the memories I want to keep. Divvying up childhood between the flotsam and jetsam. A flock of arctic terns crowd the sky. Eyes foreign, yet familiar. Like those shipwrecked memories that come to wake me in the night.
Summer, 2006
I have just finished my fourth year of secondary school. My father and I have come to visit my grandparents for the week. It is night and he is visiting a neighbour across the road. I sit and wait. Sit and wait. Listen to cars pass in the street below. The muffled sound of a TV next door. The felt hat in the half-light. Its peacock feather like an open eye, stares back. The same hat the bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín had as a boy. But is this true? Can I ever know? A present given to me when I lived in Ecuador when I was two years old. The boat next to it. I slip beneath the warmth of the duvet. White crest of the wave. Sleep opening up to me like a moth’s wings to the night.
12/11/20
I dream of a black tie party. The halls and rooms are lit by neon lights of pinks, purples, reds, greens and blues. Guests talk and chat. Champagne flutes in their hands. Everyone looks beautiful. The women dressed in long skirts and high-heels. The men in tuxedos. I’m wearing a crisp, white double cuffed shirt with a bow tie. I sense that I’m being admired. That a woman across the room is looking at me.
The dream skips to morning. Sun rises egg-yolk yellow above the horizon. I am in a field walking away from the party. I take off my bow tie and discard it in the grass. I am walking to greet the bulls.
I sense their energy right away. Their anger pressing up against the wooden fence. They want out. I continue to walk along the border, the hordes of bulls groaning and pressing against the confines of their lot. Soon, one escapes. It runs after me. Drawing closer and closer. Without hesitation, I jump up onto the fence. The bull follows. The two of us poised like tightrope artists on the thin wooden slats. Luckily, I was quicker than the bull and the bull soon gives up.
I jump down and remember what I came here to do. I need to feed the pigs. I walk towards the barn to collect a pair of rubber boots and waders.
Bamburgh Castle, 10/07/20
I am following my father through a sea of corn. The smell of salt on the wind. He holds a map in his right hand. Compass pressed down on its waterproof sleeve with thumb and forefinger. In the field ahead is a drove of bullocks. Heads down, they are grazing.
We reach a stile. Steps of wood rising above a barbed wire fence. My dad passes the map and compass to me as he crosses. A bull raises its head.
There must be thirty or more. Shadows cast across the field. They look at us with their bloodshot eyes. Flies hovering over their backs. A brown coloured bull ducks its head. Digs its hooves into mud. My father opens his arms. Shouts. It does not listen. It ducks again. Moves in.
I squeeze the map and compass. Forefinger pressed against Tughall Burn river. The North Sea beneath my thumb. Eyes shut, I can see the blood of the sun. Its beating heart beneath my eyelids.
Winter, 2020
El sol es el mejor torero.
I wonder what it would be like to see a bullfight? Stadium filled with people. The matador in his traje de luces - the suit of lights. A dress cape of silk and satin, richly beaded and embroidered in gold on his back. Black montera perched on his head like a falcon. Its wings made of black silk chenille balls.
In researching the different stages of a bullfight, I come across the words: el sol es el mejor torero. It is written in a language that I was once fluent in. A language I can no longer pronounce. I try to repeat the phrase: el sol es el mejor torero. I think back to my childhood in Ecuador and Quito with its endless summers…
In the final tercio, the faena, the matador stands at the centre of the ring. Montera held in their right hand, folded muleta and sword in the left. The bull takes refuge in the shadows of the querencia. Its hide bleeding from the three pairs of banderillas that swing from its withers.
The matador tosses the montera over his shoulder to the ground. The black silk chenille balls hit the dust.
If the bull is lucky, it might survive. Most are killed. A sword driven into the bull’s neck severs the aorta. 1,300 pounds of meat buckling at the knee.
I look at the hat and the boat next to it. Imagine the small wooden men with their buckets hauling blood from the bull’s neck.
El sol es el mejor torero. Words foreign, yet familiar. How do I speak to my memories when I no longer understand their language? Who is the sand-coloured woman, disappearing into sand-coloured paper? Why was I given the hat? I look to the small wooden men for answers. They say nothing. I wonder if I will ever travel back to Quito? I have an Ecuadorian passport that my mother keeps telling me I need to renew.
After the bull has been killed, its carcass is dragged from the arena. Its meat sold in the plaza de toros. Inside, the ring is raked over. El sol es el mejor torero.
El sol es el mejor torero.
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