{"id":108,"date":"2015-08-20T09:21:47","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T09:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/?page_id=108"},"modified":"2015-10-27T14:35:08","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T14:35:08","slug":"there-are-no-unsacred-places","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/essays\/there-are-no-unsacred-places\/","title":{"rendered":"THERE ARE NO UNSACRED PLACES by Tanya Shadrick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/strong>There are only sacred places\u00a0<\/em>and desecrated places\u00a0[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

May Bank Holiday, the year before last, Bradford Road. The protected eighty-year old conker tree in the field opposite my house had been attacked and those of us who maintain the space for public use were gathered to witness.<\/p>\n

As when horses get stabbed: how it was. Obscene-looking, against nature, of alien intent. Skinned of bark six feet high; a flaying deep and neat and deliberate; effortful. We began to cast about for suspects – \u2018Cui bono?<\/em>\u2019 someone kept saying \u2013 and to wonder whether the tree could be bandaged in some saving way: adult attempts to metabolise our shock. The children took a direct hit and cried. One of them held my hand and said \u2018Why does someone hate the tree?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

My reaction was slower taking shape and came from a primitive place not tapped before, cocooned in books as I am. Some act of equal and opposite force was needed, but what? An answer came immediately I asked, with strange and compelling logic. The railings that ran the length of the field and my road \u2013 intricate, gone brown and brittle \u2013 I would paint them. By myself, on my knees, for as long as it took. Rebuke, reparation. An act both silly and serious.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What I say that first Bank Holiday Monday to some beery passersby amused by a middle-aged woman on her knees, stiff with bad back and green Hammerite, working while they are at leisure: I am a long, slow fuck you<\/em> to the vandals.<\/em><\/p>\n

But as hours pass in which I move only feet from my starting point something else sets in: A sense of place last felt in childhood when life was almost wholly in this key, this tempo \u2013 down low, slow, as in the time my friend and I spent a whole day circling her bungalow by fingertip to find and pick free every paintbrush hair that had come loose and dried into the whitewash. A sensory denseness, everything coming to me neat through the few inches between two railings: the icecream van\u2019s jewelry box version of Greensleeves; a magpie rattling from the urine-tinged hawthorn; couples arguing on their way home, smelling of drink and barbecues.<\/p>\n

I go to bed with the clearest head in years, emptied of self, saturated with day; on to something<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A few months of regular hours and I\u2019ve become known for it. Children at school laugh up my sleeves at the green underneath; people stop me in the high street: \u2018You\u2019re that woman on Bradford Road who paints the railings.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite my deep inclination towards privacy, I become an art installation, a performance artist in headscarf, slippers and apron, provoking responses from the public. To formalise the undertaking, I have a rule of engagement: Speak only when spoken to, and speak not at all if gestures will do:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Like the Forth Bridge this, eh?\u2019 [Smile, nod, keep painting]
\n\u2018Community service is it?\u2019 [Smile, nod, keep painting]
\n\u2018Getting paid?\u2019 [Smile, shake head, keep painting]
\n\u2018How many left now?\u2019 [Smile, shrug, keep painting]<\/p>\n

A few people, very few, stop and watch without speaking. I paint then with elaborate care, my brush running intimately over the braided metal poles: a geisha feeling, to bend over an everyday action with devotion. And erotic almost, to be watched at work.<\/p>\n

Only towards the end, a whole year in, does a person \u2013 a retired man in ill health \u2013 ask: Why have you kept going<\/em>? And why alone?<\/em> I stop work, take off my sunglasses:<\/p>\n

Because: I was not born here but belong now through effort; and I have learned to sit still and be quiet finally; and I can write in the evenings with an ease in proportion to the hours my hand has painted in the day; and I almost died after the birth of my first child, as you know, and have been in pain ever since – this has cured me of that too.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spoken in my private voice; the earnest one like a book gone out of fashion. Despite the paint he takes me by the hands, is tearful, and we stand there a while, not speaking: two unemployed people in the second half of our lives, in a street like other streets in this expensive town, almost empty of residents during the week. Conduct a quiet moment of grace.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Wendell Berry, ‘How to be a Poet’<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0Poetry\u00a0(January 2001).<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are only sacred places\u00a0and desecrated places\u00a0[1] May Bank Holiday, the year before last, Bradford Road. The protected eighty-year old Continue ReadingTHERE ARE NO UNSACRED PLACES by Tanya Shadrick<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":101,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-108","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P6Ati4-1K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1090,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/108\/revisions\/1090"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/newpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}