The trouble with photographs

The trouble with bad art, Tom Stoppard claimed, is that the artist knows exactly what he’s doing. The trouble with that claim is that not knowing what you’re doing doesn’t guarantee you’ll make good art. If it did, I’d be making good art every time I photographed something.

…

On the far side of the valley, misty rain hangs gloomy in the gullies around Zigzag Road, wraps itself around old macrocarpas and broken pines and scrubby kanuka, softens the morning, softens the ground that’s been drying and hardening as spring rushes towards summer. Some urge compels me to step outside to try to capture the mood of the morning in a photograph. I’ve tried this before—to make a photograph that accurately evokes this particular rainy-morning mood—but every attempt has left me dissatisfied. This time I think I’ve come close, but the thing with photographs is that they need time before their worth—or worthlessness—can be assessed reliably.
Sometimes a photograph excites me immediately. Later, after having looked at it frequently, or after not having looked at it all, maybe for weeks, I’ll open it and study it and be unimpressed. Sometimes I’ll even cringe: is my judgement that bad? Did I know what I was doing?

It’s tempting to say the reason for this inability to immediately assess a photograph remains a mystery, but if it is, the mystery isn’t complete. One obvious reason is that initial impressions are always coloured by the memory of what was photographed—one sees not just the photograph but the image in memory, which we now know is horribly unreliable. But recent memories are likely to be more accurate than older memories; more to the point, they’re more comprehensive than older memories, so when we look at a photograph soon after its creation, the things that excited us enough to make the photograph will be remembered more clearly and comprehensively than if we look at the photograph a few weeks later. Consequently, the photograph evokes a more comprehensive set of uplifting memories. A problem with this reasoning, however, is that sometimes an initially uninspiring photograph will look better after a period of forgetting. Maybe one forgets the feelings that initially detracted from the photograph? Plausible (perhaps), but I’m unconvinced.

Another reason is that how one responds to a photograph will almost certainly be coloured by one’s mood. The Online Photographer’s Mike Johnston noticed this about his perceptions of music and wondered whether the same could be said about photographs; I, like some of those who commented, imagine this to be indubitable. No one’s mood remains constant—or, if it does, they fall into one of three types: saints, arseholes, and the pathologically boring—so one’s response to a photograph might also be expected to fluctuate. While this reason at least has the advantage that it explains equally well why a photograph can eventually look better or worse than it did at first, it fails to explain why the impression of a photograph seems eventually to settle down, or at least not change as wildly as sometimes happens after that initial period.

So, I’m taking a risk with this photograph, which hasn’t yet matured enough to persuade me it does what my early impressions tell me it does. I know some people will see gloom, depression, and miserable weather—which does NOT mean those people are necessarily gloomy, depressed, and miserable—and perhaps a year from now I’ll see that in this photograph too. Now, however, I see hints of wildness and solitude, hints of the kind of weather that keeps the red dust of the world from settling, and that suggests the possibility of being able to disappear, to walk out of the hectic world. This, I suppose, is the difference between a literal and a metaphorical viewing of a photograph. Others would call it romanticism, or worse, but that’s their prerogative. I’ll take comfort in the thought that I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing.

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Notes:
1. Tom Stoppard’s claim — cited by Clive James (2008) on p. 787 of Cultural Amnesia, New York: Norton.  

2. ‘“Red dust'” is a Buddhist cliché for sensation’ — Red Pine (Bill Porter) (2000), on p. 110 of his translation of The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press.

Photos:
1 & 2. Two attempts about five minutes apart. A slight difference in feel.

Photos and original text © 2013 Pete McGregor

Departures

I knew the fact — how a bird that weighs only about the same as a can of beer flies further without stopping than any other bird (about 11,000 kilometres from Alaska to New Zealand). I knew them since my childhood and adolescence, knew them where I grew up next to the Avon-Heathcote estuary in Christchurch. Decades later I’d seen them at Foxton, helped sample the mudflats for the food that sustained them on those tremendous flights. I'd even written about them. But I’d never seen them take to the air and leave on the 9000 kilometre flight to the Yellow Sea and eventually back to Alaska. Then, on the last weekend of March this year I finally saw seven bar-tailed godwits rise into the evening and fly fast away from Foxton, the small flock sticking together as if supporting each other, their silhouettes diminishing until even through the binoculars they became little more than dark dots in a pale sky. Then nothing.

Only then did I understand what this meant — the enormity of it, the astonishing accomplishment, the sheer incomprehensibility of what it means to suddenly take to the air and set off on a non-stop flight over the ocean to a place 9000 km away. The usual explanations for why they fly in small groups rather than singly — drafting, like cyclists in a race, or perhaps some kind of wisdom of the flock that ensures any error in navigation will be corrected by the other birds — seemed secondary, even unimportant. The real reason godwits fly in small flocks, I understood, must surely be because flying alone on a journey like that is just too scary.

That’s almost certainly rubbish, of course. In all likelihood, godwits just leave because they feel compelled: some urge gets too strong, one bird takes flight and that’s the trigger; everyone in the group goes too, possibly with a sense of relief and some vague feeling that this is what they need to be doing right now — flying in a certain direction with no intention of landing until some other urge tells them this is the place to land.

For me, though, the sight of those small birds speeding through the sky, getting smaller, seemed inconsolably lonely, like watching a plane carry away a loved one on a journey with no return date. Perhaps the feeling’s universal, or maybe it runs in the family: my mother eventually couldn’t wait around at airports — it’s always hardest for the person left behind, she said, and she was right. The traveller looks ahead at least as much as he looks back, but those who farewell the traveller are denied the consolation of that distraction; for them, the absence is paramount.

So I watched through the binoculars until I lost sight of the small silhouettes heading away, and if I’d had wings I’d have flown after them, not knowing whether I was flying away from a known life or towards the exquisite promise of something unknown. What we know can be a joy, but the unknown will always offer that additional hope: the possibility of what might be.

I have an image in my mind, an image of small birds speeding over the deep ocean, far out there in the darkness, passing over the occasional lights of a ship, weaving between clouds, light from the waning gibbous moon on their wings.

Fare well, my friends.

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Photograph: Flight over the Himalaya, 2007

Photographs and original text © 2013 Pete McGregor

Portraits from the past

In the article, Denis Healey talks about Thatcher. But what caught my interest wasn’t the subject — neither Healey nor, most definitely, the odious Thatcher — but Kalpesh Lathigra’s photograph of Healey. Dull, desaturated, drab, without a single strong or even definite colour, so flat that the light struggles to cast a decent shadow — and brilliant. I don’t need to read the article to get a sense of who Denis Healey is; in fact, I suspect this might be the kind of photograph that says more about its subject than the subject understands about himself.

Open-necked shirt held captive by a woolly jersey; corduroy jacket an olive colour (if colour can be the right word for such a non-colour in such an uncolourful photograph) and apparently — and worryingly — identical to one I still own; a chin almost receding, although that might be an illusion created by the wattles, fleshy and stretched, connecting the chin to the neck and throat; nostrils choked with chopped-off nose-hair — and those eyebrows. Exuberant and wiry, they seem connected to a separate part of the brain not owned by Healey but by the eyebrows themselves. They seem, it might be said, to have a mind of their own; even, perhaps, separate minds for each eyebrow. The right eyebrow sits luxuriant above the strongest feature of the whole portrait: the right eye, with its small black pupil focused on a thought elsewhere, proving once and for all that great portraits do not need to stare down the viewer. The left eyebrow, on the other hand, seems intent on escaping from the photograph, pouring down off the brow and across the eye, which consequently can’t be seen clearly beneath the torrent of wiry hair; an eyebrow constituting a different kind of comb-over.
The mouth: a line, inscrutable. A first look suggests the idea of an impish smile; look longer and the impishness recedes, to be replaced by a grimace that might be resignation or even a trace of bitterness. Perhaps the mouth expresses all these things at once. I wish I were as good at multi-tasking.

Of course, I have no idea how well the photograph portrays Healey. In fact, I keep getting the uneasy feeling that it’s a better portrayal of E.O. Wilson, and that might be part of its appeal. What it does do indisputably, however, is portray a person, and therefore it can be considered a portrait — to my mind, a brilliant one. But don't take my word for it. Go and see for yourself.

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Photograph: Tuatara at Pukaha Mt Bruce, 13 January 2008.

All content © 2013 Pete McGregor

Bolivia: Uyuni and the Salar

[See Bolivia: La Paz to Uyuni for the preceding post.]

The ruins of other moments

At 6:30 I rise, sneak quietly out of the dorm and head to the lounge to write. Sunlight cuts through the silence, reflects from the varnished wooden table, bounces around in the cold, brightens black ink on cream paper, enhances the quiet. A woman walks into the room. "Buen dia," I say, and she smiles, says "Buen dia," and carries on into the kitchen to begin preparing breakfast. The owner arrives, we exchange greetings, and he goes to the kitchen and talks with the woman. I return to my writing and the room continues to brighten.

Outside, the sky, pale blue and brilliant, hints at bitter cold.

Davide [L] and Filippo wait for José 
outside the Quechua Connection office 
in Uyuni.

Breakfast turns out to be café con leche and a couple of good bread rolls — not the cotton wool sort provided by the Loki in La Paz — with peach(?) jam as a welcome change from the ubiquitous and overly sweet strawberry.

After breakfast, Davide, Filippo and I visit several tour agencies and listen to sales pitches until the pattern becomes clear: in short, we need more people to fill a jeep. Some of the agencies already have indications from other people that they might sign up, but the catch seems to be that none of the prospective clients will commit until they know they'll have a full group and can be on their way immediately. Rather like us — everyone in a hurry. I'm glad I'm with Filippo and Davide because three of us make up half a jeep-load; on my own, who knows how long I'd have to wait. On the other hand, I seem to be more content than most people to hang around doing nothing in particular (which is different from nothing at all, but the difference can be elusive).

Finally, we sign up for a four-day tour with Quechua Connection, with Vincent, Jean-Baptiste and Eugenie, all from France, making up the necessary six people for the tour. We attend to a few things in town, I book a night at the hostel for my return — only Vincent will be coming back to Uyuni with me; the others will leave us on the final day to transfer to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile — then we meet as scheduled at 11 a.m. at the office.

José still hasn’t arrived. We go into the vacant office to shelter from the sun and wait and wonder whether we’ve made a mistake signing up with Quechua, but the doubt proves unwarranted, right from the moment José finally arrives and begins loading quickly and efficiently and we warm to his good humour.  We squeeze into the Landcruiser and just ten minutes later  stop on the outskirts of Uyuni at the train cemetery. This turns out also to be a plastic bag cemetery and a graffiti park. Some of the tagging’s thoughtful — “Stop mass consumption!”, “Think!”, “Stop using oil!” — but much is the usual mindless scrawl of names, dates and the like, and one piece in particular is acutely embarrassing: a couple of names with “New Zealand” in enormous letters on the boiler of one of the engines. Other jeeploads of people cruise around, photographing; many photograph each other striking poses on top of rusting engines, peering out through old latticed iron; a few wander alone like me, prowling for pictures. In the glaring midday sun the contrast between light and shadow is extreme, and I photograph without hope — hope, which seems to have fled this place of endings and despair.

Filippo looks out over the Ojos de Salar. The ground seemed
solid and I heard no reports of tourists disappearing into
the subterranean lake.

We stop next at the salt factory, where José rises further in my estimation when I see he’s taken the trouble to peel the tomatoes and cucumber which we eat with quinoa and a tasty lamb chop and follow with an apple and lollies. During the coming days we realise we’ve made, whether by chance or not, an excellent choice of guide, not least because of the meals he produces. One evening we hear another group chatting in less-than-complimentary terms about their food, yet shortly afterwards, José brings our dinner: succulent, tasty, roast chicken. In the Landcruiser the next day I ask him how long he’s been guiding on the Salar. Now, as I write, I’ve forgotten his reply and at the time failed to write it down, but one thing I do remember — he began on these tours, he said, as a cook.

We stop briefly at the Ojos de Salar, the Eyes of the Salar, upwellings where bitterly cold water bubbles through small holes in the salt, reminding us we’re driving on a crust of salt over a liquid lake, then carry on to the original salt hotel, now a museum — and a circus, with a good dozen jeeps parked outside and tourists everywhere doing the “crazy photo” thing. Because the almost featureless plain and sky provides little visual perspective, a person fifty metres away viewed with one eye closed or through a camera lens appears indistinguishable from a mouse-sized person close by; hold your hand out, palm up and get someone to frame the photo so your hand’s level with your distant friend’s feet, and the photo will look as if you’re holding your miniature friend on your hand. Everyone’s doing it, but, perhaps because of that, I feel an aversion to trying to produce a photograph identical to the countless others framed here over the years.

Instead, I wander off and photograph the photographers and the jeeps, thinking of something a friend once told me, years ago.
    “Awareness of awareness is not the awareness,” she’d said.
This can be as much a curse as a route to deeper understanding: being conscious of being happy can sometimes ruin the happiness, and analysis often seems opposed to spontaneous delight. Not always, but the danger exists, and I wonder whether now, walking away from the crazy photographers and the rows of jeeps, and a couple of days ago as I grumped inwardly about the Loki, I might have lost the ability to lose myself and simply take delight in what’s happening now.

A room (for display only) in the salt hotel. The yellow light
results from the colour of the skylight in the hallway.

But I turn and face away from the crowds and look out towards the apparent emptiness of the vast white plain. On the shimmering horizon, faint shapes of low mountains tremble as if insecure in their own existence. This is why I came to the salar.

After a desultory inspection of the interior of the repurposed hotel where a few parties of tourists eat lunch, we drive to our accommodation at Coqueza, stopping occasionally for photographs. José collects everyone’s cameras to record a group “crazy photo”, but for some unfathomable reason and despite several attempts he can’t work mine — or at least he manages only a couple of motion-blurred, overexposed shots of his feet and someone almost unidentifiable (later, after extracting what little information could be recovered from the blown-out image, I recognise someone I think might be Vincent). I don’t mind; I’m far less interested in having a crazy photo of my own than I am in photographing the crazy photographers, and if I did want a copy, I should be able to get one from Davide or Filipo. Besides, the camera’s refusal to cooperate seems to vindicate my curmudgeonly attitude — a theory proved beyond doubt later when I photograph Filipo photographing Davide; now that the camera no longer has to cooperate to photograph what its owner doesn’t want, it works perfectly.

Crazy photographers

Before dinner we have a couple of hours of free time. I wander to the shore, a muddy strip of land between the close-cropped, rucked-up pasture and the immense plain of the salar. Flamingoes step and feed in shallow ponds; a couple of species of shorebirds and some kind of flycatcher forage for invertebrates; an Andean lapwing, an Andean gull, and a pair of stilts fly past. On the salt flats near the village a Landcruiser pursues a fleeing vicuña, and I wonder what the passengers think: are they enjoying the thrill of the chase, the possibility of a closer look, or are they mortified by their guide’s harrassing of the animal?

I lend my binoculars to an elderly French woman and later to Jean-Baptiste and Eugenie so they can see the flamingoes better. The reaction in each case: “Oh!”

On the way back to the hostel, a movement on the bank of a tiny stream catches my eye. At first, it looks like a large beetle, but when I look closer, I see it’s a tiny, charcoal-grey, almost black frog. Another, even smaller, half-swims, half-crawls upstream through the silty water and algae. How can these tiny ectotherms survive here? At night here at almost 3700 m the temperature sometimes drops to minus nine degrees Celsius[1] and although during the day the frogs’ dark colour presumably helps them absorb the sun’s warmth, surely they risk being frozen at night? Do they burrow below the level of the frost, or do they have the ability to let their bodies cool below zero without freezing? Can they, like some other animals in similarly extreme environments, freeze then thaw without dying? Some frogs can indeed freeze, albeit only partially[2,3,4] and perhaps these little frogs can also manage this remarkable feat, which seems less like survival and more like a miraculous resurrection. This ability of life to survive in places apparently unsurvivable — its resilience and sheer tenacity — constantly astonishes and delights me.

A less publicised aspect of Salar de Uyuni tourism: some of the
vehicles outside the salt hotel while we visited.

What also delights me is the peace and tranquility of this place. Sitting by the edge of the salar, I can hear almost nothing except the occasional croak-honk of the flamingoes, the high-pitched, rapid calls of shorebirds, the far-off sounds of kids playing football. Every sound enhances the silence, and even the presence of other visitors wandering around slowly and quietly, as if similarly affected, can’t disturb the wonderful feeling of relative solitude.

Towards sunset we drive a short way onto the salar to watch and photograph the sun going down, the shadows lengthening, the colours changing. In the distance, white clouds cap the faint shapes of mountains on the far side of the salar; the clouds gradually turn pink and orange then fade into the violet-grey dusk. Someone during these first days on the salar says something about the purity of the place.

The word might not be perfectly apt, but I know what he means.

We stayed at Coqueza on the first night, watched over by Volcán Tunupa (in the background) and free range llamas.

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Notes: 1. Salar de Uyuni. (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved 2 December 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Uyuni#Flora_and_fauna
2. Can frogs survive being frozen? (2012). Retrieved 2 December 2012, from http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/80-can-frogs-survive-being-frozen.html
3. Costanzo, J. P. (2012). Extreme cold hardiness in ectotherms. Nature Education Knowledge, 3(10), 3. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/extreme-cold-hardiness-in-ectotherms-24286275
4. Bazin, Y., Wharton, D. A., & Bishop, P. J. (2007). Cold tolerance and overwintering of an introduced New Zealand frog, the brown tree frog (Litoria ewingii). Cryo Letters, 28(5), 347–358.

Photos and original text © 2012 Pete McGregor

Bolivia: La Paz to Uyuni

No, the blog hasn't died. I’ve been stuck on this post for a long time, and have finally decided that whatever its faults, it needs to be out there. So, here it is, with the remaining half (approximately) of the account—the rest of Bolivia and on through Argentina into Patagonia and back up through Chile—still to come.

The bus to Oruro smells like an old kitchen overdue for degreasing. Two crucifixes taped to the windscreen’s sunshade clash with the Playboy logo on the door. The bus heaves itself out of the station shortly after 9:30 a.m., but an hour later we’re still creeping through the traffic-blocked streets of El Alto and touting for more passengers. Stall owners stand behind piles of carrots, onions, potatoes, clothing, electronic items and almost anything else imaginable, but the most striking are the enormous pyramids of eggs. Perhaps they’re more stable than they appear, but what would happen if some passerby dislodged an egg from near the base? The consequences don’t bear imagining.

Eventually we make it out of the city. I can’t say I’m unhappy to leave La Paz, although it does have charms, particularly the vibrancy of the after-dark street markets — that Blade Runner feel once more — but the central city must be even more polluted than Quito, the stinking diesel exhausts confined by tall buildings and narrow streets. Character, yes; charming, no. Nor am I sad to leave the Loki. While the staff was great, the bathrooms excellent and the beds comfortable, this hostel chain seems to market itself as the kind of place that appeals to people with whom I feel little in common — smokers, partiers, young people trying to out-cool each other, trying to score each other — where everyone’s “stoked” and “like” replaces half the punctuation in every conversation. I did chat briefly with some likeable travellers, but the Loki made me reevaluate my thoughts about authenticity — of all the places I’ve been on this journey, the Loki strikes me as the least “authentic”.

But how do we distinguish authenticity from our own preferences, our own likes and dislikes? Perhaps the Loki represents one facet of the authentic backpacker lifestyle, and whether I like it or not is beside the point. Having gone from appreciating authenticity to finding it everywhere and in everything, then, thanks to the Loki, becoming less convinced that everything can be considered authentic, I find myself confused. I can conclude only that, to be meaningful, the word “authentic” must always be qualified, that one must always say what one means when using it; thus, the Loki might deliver an authentic experience of party-hostels, but has nothing of substance in common with South American ways of life outside the tourist trail.

As we leave El Alto the bus picks up speed. Windows rattle and won’t close. We pass through a stark, hard landscape — small, drab adobe buildings; the glare of high altitude light; low, gnawed vegetation; littered roadsides; small figures shepherding llamas and sheep. The tops of barren mountains peek above the puna’s distant horizon. In one direction dust devils swirl like manifestations of the difficulty of living in such a place; in the other, mirage dissolves the world. How often have I travelled through this kind of country, these grey and brown dusty deserts scabbed with broken rock and studded with small, tough, thorny plants? Most of the world seems like this, and I can recall the feel of the damp Amazon only with an effort, while the tremendous humidity of Ghana, where the air itself seemed liquid, must surely have been a dream. The bus drives on, and I wonder how much more of the world will come to resemble what I see beyond the grimy window.

By the time we reach Oruro we’re looking forward to food, and after a short exploration and a few queries we find a restaurant. Unfortunately, we have almost no idea what the menu represents. Davide and I each end up with an enormous section of the ribcage of some medium-sized animal — mostly bone, thinly covered with semi-mummified meat — on a bed of rice with a small, probably poisonous salad and potatoes that taste like soil. Filippo does much better, with pique macho — a huge plate of boneless meat, sausage, boiled egg, tomato, and chips. He shares it with us. I manage to prise most of the meat off my section of animal, and with Filippo’s pique macho and the rice and potato, at least I’ve had enough to make up for the insubstantial breakfast at the Loki.

...

The shadow of the train creeps out towards the hills. Later, sunlight slides out from beneath the train, following the long shadows. We pass through a grey and brown and pale yellow world under a blue sky splattered with white thunderheads. The light softens; some of the most beautiful colours I’ve seen in a landscape emerge and, unbidden, memories arise — past hurts now seem of no importance; all is forgiven, none of the hurt matters. I think of Barry Lopez’s words: "It is in the land, I once thought, that one searches out and eventually finds what is beautiful. And an edge of this deep and rarefied beauty is the acceptance of complex paradox and the forgiveness of others."[1] Remembering these words, I realise the true extent of his insight and wish others could too. I could gaze out these windows indefinitely, perfectly happy to appreciate and think and simply wait for whatever the dusk has to offer.

But shortly before 7 p.m., before the windows darken completely, we reach Sevaruyo and the carriage lights come on, trapping us in a bubble of light. The darkness outside turns opaque and the windows turn to mirrors. With nothing else to do, I watch the video. Curiously, the film (Limitless) turns out to be loosely based on the concept of neuroenhancement, an essay topic I’d suggested a couple of semesters ago for a paper I’d tutored. I’d been surprised by the lack of interest from the students and wondered whether the ethical problems so apparent to me seemed non-issues to most of my students.

At Uyuni we find the hostel easily, settle in, then go for a beer at a smokey bar around the corner. A man accosts us, trying to sell us a tour of the Salar. We discuss it at length and Omar draws a map of the proposed route in my notebook. It resembles a wiring diagram for the Large Hadron Collider. We make no promises, saying only that we need first to see what the other operators will offer. Back at the hostel I climb into the cosiest bed I’ve encountered during this entire journey, and sleep until dawn.

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Notes:
1. Lopez, B. (1998). Arctic Dreams. London: Harvill. (Original work published 1986). (Epilogue, p. 410)

Photos:
1, 2.The spectacular landscape surrounding the Muela del Diablo ("Devil's molar") on the outskirts of La Paz. (See another, looking from the Muela itself, here.)
3. Italians Davide and Filipo, with whom I travelled during most of my time in Bolivia.
4, 5. From the window of the train between Oruro and Uyuni. (More, larger, here, here, and here.)

Photos and original text © 2012 Pete McGregor

Sketches of moments

Leonie has a new project over at Weekends Collected. Already the posts have begun to accumulate, building a collection of stories in words and photographs about "the times that are lived within the space of our arm’s reach… the places that are the source of our ‘humanness’… the foundations on which the rest of our life is built."

I've contributed a short post; please think about submitting something yourself.

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Photos and original text © 2011 Pete McGregor

Scarred for life

The first scar left the most lasting impact — the tip of your left middle finger vanished when, almost as long ago as you can remember, the car door slammed on that tiny finger. You remember nothing of the pain, nothing of the trauma; you have a few mental images — vague forms, impressions — of the car, your parents, the house, the driveway, the garden and the ash tree that was always there in front of the house, always the first thing seen beyond the big ceiling-to-floor windows and before the view over the market garden (usually a chaos of weeds, long dry grass and an occasional caterpillar-raddled cabbage). Of the trip to hospital you remember nothing, nor do you have anything but the faintest of impressions of the hospital itself, and those impressions might well have arisen from other visits, perhaps the apparently long stay when you had bronchitis or pneumonia or something similarly life-threatening at that age. Whether the illness preceded or followed the incident with the car door, you don’t remember.

You do recall coming home in the car after hospital — you were told the incident happened on your return after the operation on your hand, but you think it might have been after the illness and protracted stay — and saying nothing, refusing to speak during the entire journey, until someone (your mum probably) got out at the letter box and collected the mail and your first word since leaving the hospital was, “Bills!” An indication you were grumpy, that the world clearly conspired to wreck your life. You don’t know how old you were at the time, only that you hadn’t yet started school but could walk and talk — the latter only when you felt like talking, mind you.

Now, all these decades later, you look at the scarred, shortened fingertip with its deformed nail, and the zipper-like scar at the base of your thumb where the doctor peeled back the skin, folded your finger so the injured tip fitted into the incision, then sewed up the wound. When the skin had grown over, the doctor cut the finger free and sutured the skin on the fingertip and at the base of the thumb. This is why you have scars in both places. At least, this is what you were told, but you don't remember having had your finger sewed to your palm. The position and form of the scars agrees with this explanation, but you’ve not heard of this approach to fixing fingertips so you wonder whether your recollection, like so much memory, might be wrong.

Now, all these decades later, the scar at the base of your thumb remains as clear and pale and tough as ever. You spread your fingers to stretch the skin of your palm so you can see the scar as clearly as possible, and suddenly you’re struck by its faint resemblance to pre-European Maori rock drawings — in particular, one that featured on a New Zealand postage stamp when you were still a boy; a stamp released when you were still years away from your teens and when you still possessed the small-boy lust for possessing things like postage stamps and dead insects. The stamp collecting soon faded away, although you still have your badly-assembled album, full of mostly worthless stamps, but the insect-collecting persisted late into your teens. Later, the desire vanished; now, you feel no urge to collect the fascinating invertebrates you come across from time to time, although you sometimes photograph them (which seems a far more satisfactory way to extend and share your enjoyment).[1]

 

The next scar arrived when you were eleven; you tripped while running at school and ripped your right knee open on the asphalt (the only grass at your school grew in the guttering). A teacher put you in a taxi and sent you to A&E where someone stitched the wound. You don’t remember the stitching but you do remember the attractive nurse who flattered you with probably bullshit comments about how brave you were because you never flinched. You were proud of those stitches, just as you were proud of the four you added to the same knee when you tripped while running at home and sliced it open on a sharp edge of concrete. You began counting your tally of stitches, then.

Now, so many decades after the first scar, you have to think hard to remember how many times you’ve been sliced open, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not, sometimes as a precaution and sometimes because you weren’t cautious enough. You no longer count sutures, though, because the doctors most often sew you up with a single stitch like the closure on a sack of rice. You wonder what stories your scars will tell to the person who lays you out on a cold table you cannot feel under bright lights you no longer see. Eventually those scars will vanish, but the breaks in your bones might tell other stories — fewer, you think, with relief — to anyone who might for god-knows-what reason retrieve them. But so much will have been lost. Who will know those healed ribs broke in a long fall; who might guess how your friends helped you down from the cliff, rowed you across the bay, flew with you to the hospital and drove you home? Given one paragraph, could you recover a book?

A white gull flies past, the black on its back and the upper surface of its wings hidden from beneath so the bird seems almost invisible against the pale, overcast sky. As the gull flies past, you see its head moving from side to side, looking, searching, ready to drop at the possibility of anything edible — the slowly inflating corpse of a road-killed possum, perhaps, or maybe a featherless chick fallen from a nest. You imagine the pale gull falling from the sky like an angel to consume the dead, and you count yourself lucky your scars healed: that you still have the chance to accumulate more, so many decades after the first.

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1. You do accept the need to collect “specimens” for scientific purposes, but you’re glad you no longer need to do this.

Photos and original text © 2012 Pete McGregor