By day: the contemplation of punctuation
ON a recent
day walk, we follow a sign along a steep leaf-strewn path shaded by forest
canopy to Camels Hump. Or is that Camel’s Hump? The birds obviously agree with
the analysis of a missing apostrophe, having perfectly placed a grammatically
correct dropping between the ‘l’ and the ‘s’ on the park sign. My companion
argues for ‘hump’ as a verb. We contemplate the likelihood of camels being
adjectival. We discuss the correct punctuation of no-nos. And goat’s cheese. Matters
of great editorial importance. The forest’s rutted paths and towering autumnal
canopy become written to memory through our conversation, forever inscribed
with wayward punctuation.
THE TERRAIN we cover is beyond the physical path we embark upon; we roam and climb and
discover more than we had planned for.
By night: the indulgence of voyeurism
A NIGHT walk is a different beast. Like the day walk it satisfies curiosity but
indulges too a longing for solitude and a tendency towards voyeurism. A desire
to spy the in-between world that night-time reveals. To watch objects
shift shape in the shadows, surrealistically bathed in halogen and moonlight,
fused into an unlikely harmony of artificial and natural illumination. In the darkness of a suburban street, wandering on our own, we bear witness to other people's domesticity: lamp lights
diffuse through net curtains, a blind half-shuttered allows a vertical slatted
view of a kitchen scene. There’s the thrum of TVs, stereos, dinnertime
conversations, children crying.
A LAMP-POST droops a sad neck with its lonely light. A picket fence leaps from the shadow
in illuminated white paint. Everyday objects transform in the darkness, become
enlivened, embellished by the blaze of autumnal moonlight and the eerie glow of
suburban street beams. The inanimate becomes personified. There’s also a
hint of melancholy. But perhaps that is our own projection.
CONVERSATIONS on the night walk are internal, complex and laced with emotional details that
resist words. You find connection in isolation; reflection in stillness.