Extract from: Beyond the Stage of Time, Volume I Realised Realms. The Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat

54 55 Th e vulnerabilities of paper are legion. Water: damp (cockling, page-sticking, mould of rainbow colours), rain (sodden dissolution), fl ood (the whirling transfer of paintings down corridors, out of doors, and on, ridden by birds, to locations un fi tted to their display), tears (of joy and of inconsolable desolation). Chemicals: foxing (fox-coloured spots), yellowing and browning (the interaction of acids in the paper, and the air), crumbling to dust, light damage (to paper and to fugitive colours, red shi ft ing to pink and then to nothing in a newsagent’s window, non-fugitive colours being ‘lightfast’; indeed, ‘speed-of-light-fast’). Insects: tunnels eaten through stacked paintings, sketchbooks, gummed pads (manifesting as pinholes in each sheet, and resembling indecipherable punchcards), excreta of sundry kinds (which smear when brushed away by the hand), larger holes (nests). Mice: world-turning work of art in, papier-mâché walls out. Fire: accident (a candlelit studio, the sweep of an inspired arm and its cargo of pine-resin soot bound in gum and loaded in a gnarled-wood- handled brush, the gi ft of a hermit gone blind who therea ft er painted only on water with his hands; or the slipping of that arm asleep in a chair; or impatience prompting ill-advised drying of a painting before the fi replace, leading to the complete destruc- tion of painting, studio and house, and emigration the same night, slipping down the fl aming river under a clouded sky turned vermilion, sa ff ron and lampblack, the shadow of the rower at once distraught and elated), public burning (decadent art, taboo books, contested laws, tall dunce’s hats on the heads of apostates; the jury is out on humanity’s ability to escape such barbarity). Gravity: a snagging-catching-ripping- marking-blunting in falling from our grip or from a hook high in the wall, set loose by damp caused by a missing roof tile and by a peal of thunder. Whatever we make, something will unmake it. Th us works of art, houses, nations are but temporary knots tied in a writhing and coiling energy which will not long brook knots, shaking them loose, only for someone to try a new form, which they claim will last, un-untieable, and uncuttable to boot. scissors One day the painter picked up his scissors, cut up a failed painting, and stuck the bits down on another sheet of paper. Th e news spread like wild fi re. ‘He doesn’t use a brush.’ People began to avoid his hut. He didn’t notice; he was busy painting with a brush just so that he could cut up the result and stick it down. Th e local o ffi cial heard, and sent a warning letter. Th e painter ignored it. His hut was fi lling with cutting pictures. Th e o ffi cial sent word up the line, and eventually the news reached the capital, vast and labyrinthine. A banishment edict was issued, and sent down the line. Th e painter shouldered a bag, and the scissors of his legs cut him into the western mountains, and away from the world of men. He built a shelter, trimming twigs and moss with his scissors. He gathered food and fermented plums for wine. By the time the snow came he had used all of his paper, and he began to cut up existing paintings to make new ones. By the end of the winter every one of them had been transformed, a shu ffl ed deck of mutable cards, a jack’s head become a skating boot, an ace of spades, the world tree. In the spring a ragged traveller stopped by for a cup of wine, all the while snatch- ing glimpses of the paintings. In the summer a company of soldiers arrived, tied the painter over a horse, and set fi re to the hut. Th e smoke of the paintings was fragrant. In the capital, the painter was marched to a sca ff old where a giant vat of water awaited him. As the Minister of Art read the sentence, the painter whipped out his scissors and cut himself, and his scissors, out of the world, leaving a black space which therea ft er people pretended not to notice. In the western mountains, as the hut was engulfed in fl ames, a bird snatched up the last untouched painting and tore it to shreds to line its nest. Th e bird died, the nest fell to the ground, and a hermit picked it up and placed it on her table, wondering at the image of a pair of scissors on the paper which lined it, and at the presence in the middle of the nest of a small, perforated stone. the playground Human life may be seen in three stages: innocence, experience, transcendence. Th e child is innocent, if cruel. Th e wheeling of the sun marks the turning of child into adult, but it is experience, and thus disillusion, which ages it. An adult stuck in stage one is infantile. An adult stuck in stage two is resigned or bitter. Most of us catch glimpses of a third stage, though few live in it. Which is not to say that those who do are an elite; they are simply those who happened to get there (as when children set beetles on a racetrack, each with a coloured dot on its carapace, one crosses the line fi rst). And those who live there do not use their living as a weapon; they use it in the service of others, and in general pass unseen. Written for a friend I met along the way. PS at the Siege Perilous, 2019 ✂ master of the water , pine & stone retreat National Pine Censers, No. 2 (detail), 2010 Ink and watercolour on paper AK 10 . 90 see Volume II p 95