The crickets are loud here. I remember that now from my childhood. I’m sitting watching the last fingers of sunset on the equinox. The darkness is coming. This morning I was careful to eat seven pomegranate seeds with my breakfast, but no more. Wouldn’t do to tempt the winter. But it’s coming.
Nevertheless I’ve got a towel beside me as I write, and my swimming shorts as well. I think there’s a very strong possibility, with the tide still coming in, that I’m going into the sea shortly. We are all going down there with torches. High tide very shortly. Equinox. Full moon…
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Well that was bloody marvelous. A huge number of us just ran into the sea in a patch of moonlight. At the end of even a summer like this it’s pretty warm in that water. I can barely remember the last time I went swimming in the dark. I was … well I was something close to nineteen years old. I was somewhere in Greece. That’s about as much as I can remember. Good to stick my head under water and properly mark the change of the year.
God alone knows what the people of Greve de Lecq thought was going on tonight. Before we all ran screaming into the dark water, we paraded with lanterns and an angel down the promenade singing a Spanish chorus. Then one of us sang a vulnerable song on his own, and we were all shown reflections of moonlight and the sea. Then we did a ritual of remembering and forgetting on the beach. Sort of a mixture of performance art, light installation and song, with a ritualistic element thrown in. The joy of it was worth the risk of being on the front of the JEP with the headline “SUSPECTED SATANISTS ON THE STRAND.”
Before I was even dry, in the queue for the shower, I started reading people’s tarot which was fine until I started getting tired. When I think back to my festival reading days, or being in that caravan on Carnaby Street, my stamina is not what it used to be. I was kind of spent after the second person, and I didn’t have anything to clean the cards with so they started popping up weird. I had to leave my oojey-boojey bag in London as I was flying and it’s probably got all sorts of shit that’ll get confiscated. I’m only here for a week so no point buying stuff I’m gonna immediately have to leave behind. Still… a nice thing to do on the equinox, and I’m glad to get back into the swing with it. I still think that tarot’s a lovely way to help people think about things from a different angle. But I’m pooped.
AlBarclay 