15 June 2004
On a cream painted wall here is a square of sunlight filled with boiling shadows, come in through the window glass, cast by the leaves outside which are blown in a noiseless breeze. Like what? Fingerprints dabbled in shining gelatine, with darker uncertainties moving under them. Uncertainties, out of focus, held in lesions of brightness which are evident only when ripples of shadow pass beneath them. The glass must be old, thick, unevenly dimpled. Worries discover blazing shapes. Sometimes the shadows clarify, here and there, as thin but always partly disconnected lines. They must come from twigs which are being swept across outside. They throw out little attempts, which vanish almost immediately, doused in the crystal insistencies. Sometimes a blot stabs down fingers, as if playing on piano keys through a storm of flames. In ten minutes the square has moved right off the wall onto a chest of drawers, painted a matt air-force blue. On this stands, in calm light, an earthenware pot, varnished. Look again. Earthenware, varnished, steady, containing a huge lily, its spades of thick rubbery leaves curving down so that one of them, moments ago, cast a perfectly definite composed shadow of itself into the seething square, though that has now moved on, in transit. One shadow. Accurate and hard-line. On the wall over all this there is a photograph of a group of people, which shows seated women, a row of pale blouses, and, above them, five men in dark ...