I Live Here Now

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I think of the encumbrance of having a well-known surname, but of how this matters less in Scotland, and even less in the international collaboration of our Crown Letter, remembering how glad I was when Dettie first mispronounced my surname, the relief of remaining unrecognised, keeping me safe and hidden, distinct from my father’s name. Orange red was the colour of the berries, and the colour chosen by EDF for warning and direction signs throughout the power station. Later I think about truces and conflicts, in families as well as in war, and the ways that we try to resolve them. I Live Here Now was the title of my book of drawings and writing about living, walking and looking in Moscow, London and Glasgow, published in 2008. There is a carpet on the floor, a sort of Persian carpet rather like the ones in the house where I grew up, and there is sunlight coming into the room, filtering through the weave of the curtains, that is to say through the brush strokes, and for the past twenty years when I was lying in my bed here this light would come in through the rough weave of my curtains, in just the same way, to fill up the space of my bedroom so that it became a day dream space, safe and encompassing, and so that I could almost see the traces of the two children in the room also, the boy and the girl, one sitting, one standing.

My children’s great grandmother grew up here, one of thirteen children, in a low two room dwelling up the side of a glen. An old philosopher I knew in Moscow told me that his name was from the Ukrainian for tailor, Sukach, from the more archaic sukno, cloth. At the back of the house cups of tea and coffee are handed out through the kitchen window from a kitchen full of shiny urns and steam. And I look on, making notes, remembering watching the woman of the basement, reading that morning on her bed, wishing but doubting that she could be more peaceful now, resisting imagining that darkness.It is still an imaginary journey for now but perhaps, if I can make the first step, onto a train that is for now just a virtual ticket, I will find myself in a different country, and bring back something to set my room alight again. When I taped them to the wall in the spring, they seemed somehow to fit the awful circumstances in which they were now situated. The professor’s wife was on the other side of the road taking cuttings, trying to get a couple of plants with the roots intact.

The island is in the bay, on the edge of a Scottish town, but just now in this storm light, it transforms itself into something like a dream — an island of light.

In as much as it seems reasonable or possible, we try to move, knowing how swiftly even these constrained escapes might be curtailed. It was pouring rain, but a gazebo was put up in the centre of the turning circle by the main doors, and ten of us huddled underneath it. It is set back from the path, in the middle of the grass, facing into the sun and the resplendent flickering willow. She held it up to the electric light for me to admire as she spoke of the wonder properties of this fruit that could ward off the most malign threats and diseases. In the fifteenth century, people suffering from syphilis were shipped to the island and left there to die.

I inhabit instead this stretch of space that is somewhere between the Moscow that I trod deep inside me over thirty years ago and the spaces of my childhood. But I trust that they will grow back deep and soft, and cover the stone once more, keeping their company. But I was too absorbed in following the movement of my friend’s voice and the shadows passing behind her, holding the two of these together, and could only imagine reaching into my bag for the trapping camera.I sit on the bench and attempt to draw the bandstand, but I cannot get the proportions right, always it is coming out too constrained, it cannot contain all the arched spaces, and I persist in trying to measure the gaps between the pillars, ignoring the advice I have just given the students. Thank-you so much for this super resource, it has prompted me to try it out and also to dig out some of old ideas to try for myself and maybe post the results. At the bottom of the hill, approaching the sea, I find myself at the edge of a large open park that I never knew was there. They were trying to explain the long unwieldy detours to people who wanted to cross the road, except they didn’t know the shape of the city so had to be helped by other people who had wanted to cross the road, but like us, been brought to a standstill.