Imprints

The pillbox on the path to Anstruther. I was talking with someone the other day about the imprinting of the world through drawing, that the act of drawing allows you to deconstruct a reality, to create an altered image. This is why I draw. Looking does not have the same impact as the combination of the eye and the hand. The making of marks allows the imagination to input, and from the present one literally draws on the past, this narrative of muscle memory, personal history, and being firmly in the here and now. It is the same for letters I have written. I can remember the flow of words across the page as my hand writes/marks the important life events. In writing this I am recalling the walk this morning and the heron and the wren and the man on the beach with his cans of Tennents and worrying about him . I was walking to Anstruther to go to the community charity shop in search of 1960’s-1970’s crockery – my latest interest of curiosity. And maybe that too is to do with imprinting – The colours and forms of my childhood, all purples and browns and oranges, and that turquiosey sea green blue. But it was shut, and as I returned along the shore path I had a quick swing on the council park swings – the old style with long rusty iron link chains. I swung up as high as I could go and tried to swallow the sky, much as I did when I was a child.