I want to account for the picture in this post. It is in no way a photo but constructed by AI from the text in the blog written by me. At first AI made me too cheerful so Finn and I asked for a modification and the final artefact was pretty much as i remember that day.
I was a bit horrified - it felt as though AI had somehow robbed me and then I thought - it’s no different from words really, or an identikit picture in a police station. But actually there is a difference. I am the eye looking at myself, and is there an eye looking at me looking at myself endlessly?
There is a jokey story about a woman challenging a professor in a lecture who was trying to explain how the earth was suspended in the universe. ‘No,’she argued with him, “It’s held up by a big tortoise.” “and what holds up the tortoise?” the professor asked indulgently. “Another tortoise of course - and its tortoises all the way down” replied the woman defiantly.
As I count the tortoises on my way down I wonder if I am afraid of what is at the bottomlessness. Deceased husband Grant used to say it’s not worth thinking about and I can’t argue with that. It’s futile, no matter how many tortoises there are. But i am glad they are tortoises all the same. Slow and kindly with good shells. It can’t be that bad.
Tuesday 18th April 1972
A desolate sort of day with a high wind blowing. I’m full of cravings for fruit cake and other impossible things. I feel more muted than ever and Mungo has been grizzly all morning. He’s sleeping now, rather against my better judgment cos it means he won’t sleep tonight.
I just went down to the meat ECA today and bought some chickens and butter.
I am puzzled now about how often I say I buy butter which seems oddly luxurious to me now and I can’t think what it looked like. What I remember wasn’t butter but Flora margarine.
I was given a lift back by some men bringing a peculiar cabinet like item of furniture for Carlo.
I’m cooking for Mana Ika and his wife tonight and am feeling a bit nervous about it. Not sure I can produce anything at all reasonable. Carlo came in this morning and said that an insect had been eating the tomato plants in the night. There’s a sort of gloomy feel about today what with the wind making the banana trees flap and their leaves split and dry into fern fronds. The sky is quite grey.
I took Mungo up to play in the grass outside Rosa’s which is flatter than ours. I was a bit appalled by the poor little house she lives in. It seems to have no windows at all – just boards over where windows should be.
Wednesday 19th April 1972
I’m fairly exhausted after taking my first real walk here. I walked along the coast in the howling wind for a couple of hours with Mungo on my back and the dogs as an escort. It was really desolate and savage with spray from the sea flying high. In some places the surf had made a sort of suds which were whipped up and away by the wind. I could imagine a shipwreck awfully easily on the black jagged rocks.
I inspected a couple of shallow caves and looked at a couple of ahus (ceremonial platforms) along beyond Tahai. The hills were bathed in a sort of mist and it all looked very bleak and sinister.
I left Grant at the padre’s house reading through his collection of articles and writings on the island. It’s a cosy, very shabby little house beside the church and has a nice gate with vines growing over it. He has a terrific collection of books, many suffering from bookworm.
Last night’s supper with the Ikas went quite well. My chicken was reasonably tasty and all eaten up as was the salad and fruit. I felt it was a passable effort considering the frustrations involved in preparing it. They were standing on ceremony rather and I played Cat’s Cradle with Olga, the daughter most of the time. She’s about 14 I think. Interestingly she doesn’t know any (Cat’s Cradles) except the Korean one even though she comes from a traditional family. All the boys know Cat’s Cradle.. I taught her Utami.
This was a cat’s cradle that was accompanied by a chant which I suspect was lewd because eveeryone laughed at the end when your fingers let go of the string and it fell in a heap. I never found out! It went, as I remember:
Utami utami. Teherue teherue, pina pina ite vai tute, Mena tofera ah weh. String drops, lots of giggles.
The Korean Cat’s cradle was known by most primary school kids in England in the1950s and is a game where one patterned loop of string is passed from one person’s hands t to another’s transforming each time. If you do it right you get tramlines and can go on forever. If yoiu stuff it up you get fish in a dish and there is no forward move. It was a mild disgrace to commit this offence.
We are all going to the country on May 1st because it’s Mungo’s birthday and Labour Day
One funny incident. Carlo swore his statue in the garden was antique and Luisa from Tahai who’d come to dinner with Mana Ika, her husband, said it reminded her of one of hers which was stolen from Anakena. So they both trooped out and had a look at it and Luisa said it was not old at all, much to Carlo’s indignation.
Mana plans to build a new house and, so he says. “Get all the things out of his secret cave and put them in the main room.” Whether or not it’s true about the secret cave, that attitude is typical of everybody’s feelings here now.
Things should be exhibited not secreted. Perhaps this is a response to the need to give tourist houses an appropriate decor.
This morning Carlo made bread in this high wind. It was very difficult, he said, to keep the fire right in the garden.
Thanks Timotheus. I have to say doing the diaries has totally killed off my wanderlust!
Because of repeating the journey in your mind or because of bringing to mind all the challenging parts?