Kinloch-Rannoch: Turrellian Coda
This marks another instance of following, after anon.
‘The kettle's on, the sun has gone
another day
she offers me Tibetan tea on a flower tray …’
– Roy Harper, ‘Another Day’
Packing
Seeing as we’ve not journeyed through Basho chronologically, my echoing flat in the Byker Wall empty for ‘renovations’, the bookshelves bare, kitchen gutted as I step out the door, stands for Basho’s departure from Edo, my former dwelling passed on to someone else on moving to Sampu's summer house …, moving on, and on, those last 4 years of his life, journey following journey, renga following renga – 180+ recorded.
I depart Edinburgh without encountering the newly arrived papal entourage or its ripples, in fact within the city the yellow bollarded streets are unusually quiet. Lorna texts later to say, have just seen Il Papa. (My meet just happened to stop at 12.) He was very small and wearing a tartan scarf. Princes St 2 deep. No cheering. Rather, people watched in mute underwhelment as he passed.
(KC)
The Sea Tips Over, The Light Spills in
We stopped off for stovies in Dunkeld – 2nd time, so it’s now ‘traditional’ – where Ann’s message reached me: The old ash tree fell down, Please tell Sue.
Mare Nostrum, Dad named it, Our Sea, for the way its sound and shadow washed over the Front Garden. Along with the 2 traditional lilac at the garden entrance and some currants, the great ash was the only thing growing at Stonypath when the family arrived (1966). Over the years Sue would add plantings for Ian’s poems as together they created a woodland out of bare hillside. Recently I found a letter IHF sent to Cid Corman from July ‘75, when the young trees were just beginning to fill out, If I was starting to garden afresh – what a nice phrase! – I would aim at the creation of nothing but sacred groves. Sacred Groves.
3 The Ash
Stonypath Garden Trust, 2010
I used to climb up into the bole of that ash and look out over the valley, balancing on the wire fence and pulling myself up by a gash in the trunk. My dare to self. There was often a little pool of rainwater cupped where the trunk split, a wild soup with leaves and windblown black-tipped branches. Now the roots are exposed.
3 hokku-label
(‘in Birnam / of the oak / comes news // the Stonypath ash / has fallen’, AF)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
(AF)
Summergone
3 Maris Kettling
Alec Finlay, 2010
Rendezvous with Maris at Kinloch-Rannoch Hotel car park. I have my Marisian camping kettle safely stowed in the boot. Today it’s to be blessed in the waters of Garbh Ghaoir, due west of the loch. We wend past names already written in the Oku travel-log: Schiehallion, Chemical Cottages, Dagganesgair, Talladh-A-Bheithe, passing the gateway to Craigvenie where we’ll return in the evening.
The river’s in a rush to reach the loch, churning white spume from peat brown flux. Maris finds a sheltered spot under oak, ash, birch and alder, near a behemoth Agaric in the lee of a rock.
3 Agaric
circle poem, AF (after John Cage, after a haiku)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
3 bluebell
(‘open/bells// silence/ringed//with/colour’, AF)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
............A
......riveR
..............By
..................Hand
knowinG
............wHat
...........cAn
............flOw
.............Is
...................River
3 meso-label, Gharbh Ghaoir
poem AF, photo KC, 2010
(AF)
You’ll have had your tea?
Maris is a great one for burn-lore; he speculates to Ken how an Allt flows off the hill into a loch, while a Gharbh flows out of a loch. Sensible Gaelic typology.
3 Sora libating, Gharbh Ghaoin
Alec Finlay, 2010
Alexander Maris, 2010
3 hokku-label, Gharbh Ghaoir.jpg
(‘a few drops of/river coloured whisky//poured into the/whisky coloured river’, AF)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
3 The Blend of Nikka
Alexander Maris, 2010
3 the kettle
Alexander Maris, 2010
While the kettle’s heating in its shiny wee bothy, Ken libates The Blend of Nikka into the river, with a blessing for Judith. Maris hands around Ruskinian smoked trout (brown), on homemade oatcakes, with marscapone – the fish caught (mostly by his son Wee James) in the pool, Glenfinlas, a few days ago.
3 audio, By the Gharbh GhaoinAF & KC, 2010
3 dedication
(‘for Ruskin/from Maris/after Epicurus’, AF)
Alexander Maris, 2010
In honour of Ruskin we decide to strike poses on suitable rocks throughout this September trip.
3 Basho’s Ruskinian Pose
Another homage: the Ruskinian trout rises to this new mesostic composed by Susan Tichy, from phrases in Ruskin's Elements of Drawing.
................MANY THINGS, SEA FOAM FOR INSTANCE
.........but I wish to speak here
of the third law, that
..........of
....mystery
....................................................—the law, namely,
........... ments
.....................serves
.............................as
.........................................................................and shade into her lights.
While form
...............................is absolute—so that you can say
.........at the moment
.............you
...................draw
...............any
........................................line
...............that it
.............................is either right
.............................................................................or wrong—
.................................colour is wholly
................relative,
..................................seen partly by light
...................re-
.................................flected from
..................................objects
.....................................................................nearby.
..........................Be mindful, thus,
......................of the correspondence
of the form of the shadow
.....................with
..................the form
.............of the object
..............................................................that casts it.
Susan Tichy, 2010
Heather Tea
Now the heather brew’s ready. To Eck it tastes like outdoor whisky with the alcohol taken out; to Ken it’s a light outdoor infusion; for Maris, slightly bitter, a tonic for depression. This and the trout are added to our catalogue of wild food.
3 heather tea
Alexander Maris, 2010
3 heather tea
Alexander Maris, 2010
3 cup, Gharbh Ghaoir
Ken Cockburn, 2010
If you’d like to try this tea yourself, Maris recommends young sprigs preferably with bells, and only take the water to the edge of the boil. (The ecologist we met later at Bunrannoch house, our B&B, was telling us about local heather jewellery, which stumped me.)
3 Camp
Alec Finlay, 2010
3 tea-moon, heather tea
Alec Finlay with Alexander Maris, 2010
3 hokku-label, Garbh Ghaoir
poem, AF, photo, KC, 2010
3 hokku-labels, kettle
poems by AF Ken Cockburn, 2010
3 hokku-labels, kettle II
hokku-labels, kettle Alexander Maris, 2010
Garbh Ghaoir
(I)
of spate water
the colour of whisky
(II)
with bells in
coming on
(III)
the summersgone
on the mountain
AF, Rannoch, 2010
Alexander Maris, 2010
Craigvenie
Time and space met at Craigvenie. The whole journey seemingly constellates around this sky-eye, this secret viewpoint into the Universe – as it constallated around Annie’s silence; the conspectus of St Fillan’s Chair; the crenelated crag of Dun Scaith; Deirdre’s sun-bower; the ghostly sail of Naoise’s birlinn on Loch Etive.
There is no edgebeyond perfection.
Steps to a framed door. Sit: take in clouds fast lift over an oval that becomes a perfect circle, sinking the eye deep into space.
Some time passes. The first star is glimpsed, transporting us into an awareness of stellar time.
This was surely another Ryushakuki temple, a grand Alban pair for Outlandia. It seemed impossible to bring words from here; and yet perception was so enriched by the intransigent idealist geometry, there was a sense of requirement to respond. I attempted a description, there and then. Ken composed a poem, after.
skyspace
3 audio, sky-eyeAlec Finlay, 2010
skyspace
after the second cattle grid turn right
past yellow boatthrough birch-woods
zigzag steep descent
over bridge ducking
low alder-limb step
off the path on
to white gravel tread
18 steps & at 19
we in unison enter
stone oval holding
oval sky-aperture
stone seat running
darkly round all
the oval wall (except
angled opening)
half height white
above the
domed floor's
centre’s
circle
seems off
disorientates
............his paintings emptied
............until they were all sky
or complex
one or the other
light fades and from
where we sit sky
monochromes still
we shuffle views
change channels now
clouds shunt stars
we want to know
what rain brings,
snow, sunrise, solstice
turner would have
loved it – and basho –
a distance crossed
a depth plumbed
cold bum from sitting
on the sublime
maris has tales of innocent walkers
no idea what on earth they've stumbled on
returning in near-darkness
the boat no longer yellow
sky again sky as if
it was ever anything
else
3 James Turrell, skyspace
Ken Cockburn, 2010
In April our friend Allan Pollok-Morris visited the 'sky-eye' and shared these viewings.
3 skyspace exterior
Photographs by Allan Pollok-Morris, 2011
3 skyspace interior
Photographs by Allan Pollok-Morris, 2011
3 James Turrell, skyspace
Film by Allan Pollok-Morris, 2011
Schiehallion
The fairy hill is becoming a top we spin around.
3 circle poem (Lushan–Schiehallion)
Alec Finlay, 2010
3 Schiehallion, beer
Ken Cockburn, 2010
3 skyline (Dunalastair Water & Schiehallion)
Alec Finlay, 2010
3 skyline (Schiehallion)
Alec Finlay, 2010
3 Schiehallion, Rebecca
Paul Edgerley, 2010
Every moment will pass through this one: Marisian Rannoch
3 Black Mount (after Caroline Tisdall)
for Maris
(‘honey for the mountains/gelatin for the moor/hare for the dreaming’, AF)
Alec Finlay, 2010
As we walked down the path from Craigvenie seeing what little of the path could be seen in the last of the light, I reflected that our journey is, in part, a mapping of contemporary art in the wilderness of Scotland, and here on the edge of Rannoch Moor we were in proximity to 3 seminal art projects of the past 3 decades .
Joseph Beuys prepared for the rite of his Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony, and he completed his now mythic action, burying a heart-shaped offering of gelatin in the moor, turning the moorland, in Maris words, into a living work of art’.
Here too was the Turrell skyspace that we had just been so moved by.
Publications
The Pursuit of Fidelity (a retrospective)
Alexander & Susan Maris, with Lisa Le Feuvre
available from www.stills.org
intimations
Allan Pollok-Morris' exhibition 'Close: A journey in Scotland' (22nd January - 5th of June 2011 at the United States Botanic Garden Exhibition, Washington DC) features an 40 of Allan's large format prints and film. He was recently interviewed by Sandy Felton, here.
Posts
Thanks a lot I just love it. To day pass away one of our famous contemporary Chilean poets "Gonzalo Rojas",regards from Chile , earth of poets Elsa
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