REBECCA SHARP: Self-Directed Residency, 2014
Birch, birch; I never knew there were two of you.
Until I found it wasn’t the trees I was peering through,
seeing and not seeing in shutters of bark,
but my own hands that hid the view.
So I did things differently.
I spent the short January days walking and making sound recordings – found sounds and my own chattering; dogs in the distance and birds. I listened back and typed up my notes at night (worth lugging the typewriter up the hill). I read Nan Shepherd and Hamish Fulton. I played hide and seek. I hate taking pictures; I put moss in a jar. I got very lost only once.
I wished I knew the names of things.
I missed my dog.
Imagine that I found you there, leaves veined with silver, seeping silver,
branches swooping low to silver-tip the soil. To lead us underground
to the tiny lit pools of what we might have thought was missing.
On the train away from Aviemore, the keenest thing I noticed was the clean laundry smell of other people’s clothes.
Many thanks to Bobby and Walter.
Text © Rebecca Sharp 2014
(Reluctant) images, RS.
