Pink
from the prose sketchbook: a vignette on slow appreciation, slow making, slow erotica
Quarter of a century ago I bought a photographic book documenting the life of Greater and Lesser flamingos in the volcanic Rift Valley. It is called Pink Africa. At 18, I don’t remember being more or less interested in these idiosyncratic birds than any other, but I still recall the appreciation I felt – no, the relief - for the book’s specificity and clarity. A single colour denoted, a single bird in profile. A singular focus.
The cover shows one Lesser (though never less in my eyes) flamingo, striding purposefully through a blue-slash of water it is mirrored in. Its pink eye finds you from the centre line of the cover, which is otherwise a blurred green of volcanic soda lake, beneath a title all in serif lower case. Beneath the dust cover the cloth-bound book is Greater-downy-powder-puff, with its title subtly embossed in leg pink.
This is one of my oldest books, many having got lost over several house moves or taken to charity shops, believing (erroneously I should think) that I would never be interested in them again. I have many older books of course, but they are younger to me (Greater? Lesser?) Yet, Pink Africa has always survived, migrating from one oversize shelf to the next, lake to lake, since the beginning of the millennium. The flamingo, the authors note, is fifty million years in the making (a bird as ancient as the rocks I studied for my PhD I note for no one) but this millennium could, as with all species, be decisive for their future. We know why.
I have spent over half of my life catching sight of this book as I pull down a blind, hurry a spider, or – very occasionally – dust the shelves. There it stands as if on one leg itself, roosting in perpetual and untroubled sleep, on the edge of my world. Like a poolside dream. I have not looked at anything more than its spine in twenty five years. Still though, it has taken up a presence in my life, in the way that objects can, and do. Books are especially good at this; patient witnesses to a future thought or care that might never come. It is, and makes, an eccentric observer of me I recognise, just as its photographer must be of their subject.
I take the book from the shelf. The birds eye that has been closed for twenty five years, opens. Does this feel like slow radio? Or watching a migration, live? If so, then you know something of me, today. This is the pace I have been moving since I returned from Italy, from Etna and Stromboli. I stand for a long time looking out of the window. There are flamingos in Maremma on the Tuscan coast but we didn’t see them. A drop falls from the tap and I stop and listen. I unwrap a sweet, take its wrapper to the bin on the other side of the house, and then return to the window before I put the sweet in my mouth. This is the sort of slow. The slow of a single colour, a single focus. Making the work I want to make, takes time.
Twenty five years ago I bought a book. Twenty five years later I make an entry of twelve photographs into my long-term project Pink Rock. A photographic compendium of blush rocks from across the world found by chance encounter or detour. If relief were a colour it would be rose quartz. Making the work I want to make takes attention. Inspiration itself is not slow, only the recognition of what it means, how long it really takes, to build substance, to catalogue love. The slow erotica of time opening and closing. Cleft and wing. Taut and breathing. Acid-sugar on the tongue. Hundreds, thousands, millions of flamingo.
This is perfect writing Ruth. I could see and feel every detail. You made me think of a travel brochure my grandmother had of Canada, when she went to visit family. The Kodachrome colours of wildness stuck with me ever since. Pictures, photographs, objects, words, they all matter don’t they, in our making and remaking of this world for others. 💕
I feel as though this post is going to take time to percolate through but it has nevertheless prompted a constellation of thoughts.
Until only recently I thought that my birthstone was rose quartz. I don't know why. Upon further research it seems to belong to any month but April depending on where you go. I have, however, kept it as my birthstone. It is the first stone I built a connection with and a small tumbled piece now sits in my bathroom, gifted to me by my Mum, in a wooden bowl made by my Grandad. A tiny glint of pale rose in my otherwise predominant sea of blues and greens.
Last year we planted a new tulip which I think you might like, 'Angelique'. The petals develop from the palest shade of pink, almost white, through rose quartz and into a deeper shade, which could definitely be flamingo, as the plant ages. We didn't know this when we planted them. It grows well in pots. The next pinks in our garden will be California poppies and raspberries.
Thank you for writing and creating as you do. Slowly, thoughtfully and in your own way. I find it very reassuring and encouraging. Take care, Naomi xx