I wake early just before dawn, and the first thing I do is to open the curtains. To be with the river again. It is deserted outside and still dark. The bridges with their arches and supports in solid lines against the sky, illuminated, guarding the night. It is cold so I open the curtains wide and climb back under the covers. I want to sit and watch the sun rise and describe the scene outside, to try and get closer to the bridges in words, in pencil lines. I am trying to tether myself to the concrete reality of these bridges, hoping to map their crossings.
Travel
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Perimeter Lines
The loss of light seems to speed up at this time, or to happen imperceptibly, so that suddenly the evening feels shrouded in it: the mystery at the heart of every cycle of time. The folding of darkness, covering and concealing, like the tracks I follow, onwards into lost time, caught in their own circle ... And now I sense how the city crosses into the tracks, and the tracks blend into the city.
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Sleeping Lions
I sit there making plans. A train ride to the city by the coast, I spend a few hours sitting by the docks and watching boats come and go. I can’t shake this stillness, this silence. I am apart, and everything is happening around me. I buy a ticket for a boat, the overnight crossing.
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Paper Ghosts
By the water’s edge, the monument to the immigrant, looking back at the city, looking out across the wide and muddy river. Situated at the point of arrival, the old port of New Orleans, marking the point of embarkation, the journey’s end and the start of crossings and travels, hopes and dreams. A two-sided statue, a decorated figure, like those carved on a ship’s prow looks out to the water; an immigrant family look towards the city. The crescent city lies at a bend in the Mississippi River. A city haunted by its migrants, by their comings and goings, the history of these streets and those who walked them.
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Astragal
‘My own words were not enough, only another’s could transform misery into inspiration.’ This encounter with another’s words and its capacity to change, to alter or steer one a certain way – the all important journey of the mind – is what I’m reaching for in my own work. And although I feel temporarily silenced by my admiration for Patti Smith’s essay, for its clarity and precision, by my wish to craft my own writing in a similar way, I know at least the flow of ideas begins by breaking the silence. Reading other’s words starts off the trail, the invisible connecting lines and the flow of thoughts; like walking.
The Street Walks In 