*
‘This house belonged to Robert Grosseteste, first Chancellor of the university,’ said Anthony. ‘He slept in this room. No windows then. Bloody cold.’
No disturbance of the light. Grosseteste shivered, but saw reality clearly. At least, at times.
‘Solete bought it when he came back from the war,’ said Antony. ‘It was completely ruined and he rebuilt it. Expanded it. He lived here for nearly seventy years.’
*
One morning and then another. He watched the days dawning, one by one. Solete rising, with his wife beside him, or, later, alone. Padding to the door, the floorboards creaking under his feet. The seasons changing beyond the window.
*
Below, doors opened off a darkened corridor. I opened one and found a library with dim lighting and oak panelling, a musty smell in the air. I spent a while reading spines: Le Morte d’Arthur, The Lord of the Rings, The House of the Duchess, The Decameron, The Princess, The Ring and the Book. There seemed to be a pattern, I couldn’t discern it. Royalty? Plague? Tale-telling? Anthony waited politely as I struggled to forge a connection. Then he led me out of the library and along the corridor again. We walked through an open kitchen area, plants climbing the walls, a hearth with copper pots. Another door, and we were in a long thin dining room, with dull green walls, a trestle table, curtains swinging in the draught.
Another passage flanked by stone figures, another doorway, and this next room was white, the shelves full of Anglo-Saxon poetry. ‘Of course, he was the last of his generation,’ said Anthony. ‘No one else survived. They were the war dons, the ones who postponed their careers to go away and fight. He was seventeen when the war began. Elegant young men, studying in these sequestered colleges and then they were blood-stained and terrified, struggling each day to survive, vomiting with fear and yet concealing every shudder of dread, every spasm of pure unbridled horror and they killed so many men, they lost count, and witnessed the gory death spasms of their comrades and then, they went back to Oxford. They were supposed to carry on. As if nothing had happened. At one level, Petrovka is right. They must all have been latently mad.’
‘It wasn’t their fault,’ I said.
He looked offended. ‘I never said it was.’
*
At the end of a gloomy corridor, there was a pinecone on a tall plinth. The plinth was a metre high, the pinecone just as tall again, immaculately rendered in shiny wood. We both stopped before it. It was the draughty corridor, or the general atmosphere of gloom, but somehow I felt unnerved. The abandoned house, the cold stone, the swift-white river beyond. And now, this weird effigy. I stood there for a while, absorbed in the strangeness, trying to understand the object before me.
Masons, Anthony was saying. The pinecone was an ancient symbol of fertility.
‘Was Solete a Mason?’ I said.
‘No. At least, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t.’
The pinecone, edifice of Masonic secrecy or fertility symbol, had been carved by Roland Port, of 23 Lake Street, Oxford. There was a little placard, behind the impressive plinth.
‘Ah yes, Mr Port,’ said Anthony. ‘A sculptor of renown.’
‘You know him?’
‘Not personally. By reputation.’
I wrote down Port’s address.
‘Did Solete say anything in his letter?’ said Anthony.
‘He said that he was sorry he was dead. Or rather, when he wrote the letter, he felt he would be sorry, then. Except of course he’s dead, so he can’t be.’
‘Any further clues?’
‘No.’
‘I think he hated O’Donovan. Wouldn’t you?’
Then I saw the time. I had to work. Lunch, I said. ‘Christ, I’ll be flayed . . .’
‘Yes of course,’ said Anthony. ‘I’ll stay here for a while and carry on.’
I said I’d call him later.
‘Why?’ He shrugged. ‘I mean, of course. Yes.’ He seemed offended though, that I was going so swiftly. I stood for a moment longer at the Pinecone, waiting perhaps for one last hint.
Nothing!
‘Keep your phone on,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you if I have any ideas . . .’
‘Most of the time it doesn’t work,’ he said. ‘You know, the mist.’
Robert Grosseteste, scion of the ancient world, rose to the successive mornings, looked through the open window and saw the river issuing onwards always onwards to the sea. He observed the slow drift of the seasons. The world turning, and time seeming to circle round and round and, yet, his bones creaked in the mornings when he rose and he looked at his hands and realised again, the impossible strange dream – he was old.
Color est lux incorporate perspicuo . . .
Colour is light incorporated in a diaphanous medium. But what is diaphaneity? When is it pure and when is it impure? Grosseteste stares at the broad blue sky slamming onto the summer fields and the gradations of colour, fiery and beautiful, and the sunlight hurts his eyes, and he doesn’t know. He believes that the extremes of colour are white, created by such fiery furious light in pure diaphaneity, and black, created by dim light in an impure diaphaneity.
The inflections of sunshine on the water, turning the river blue then gold. Copious or scarce light, bright or dim light, pure or impure diaphaneity. The sun is in the presence of God, says Grosseteste. Its light is the first visible light that shows the species of all colours; and since colour is incorporated light, which due to its incorporation does not move itself to become visible except when an external light is poured onto it, it is clear that colour is born together with visible light . . . Everything which is visible, is so by the nature of light.
Grosseteste observes – the sunshine boiling across the fields, illuminating the textures of the trees, so they are furry then spiny then florescent, then matted with dark ivy then burnished with gold. By light we perceive; and we are of the sun. In the beginning there was darkness and no colour at all. Everything glistens, sparkles and fades. Years pass, and Grosseteste looks at the world beyond and wonders if his eye emits light, or if the world sends light into his eye, and what is all this stuff – this diaphaneity – that swirls between him and all things? That swirls among the objects and creatures of the world, and causes them to be seen?
*
I walked from Mesopotamia to Nightingale Bridge, with the conversational gurgle of the river beside me. I passed a flock of geese, drifting on the current. At Nightingale Bridge I left the Cherwell and turned to the west, and walked instead along the Isis. On Aristotle Meadow there were students walking swiftly, hunched and forlorn. I moved through mist-glades and dark reaches where the river nearly stalled and then past old drunks rustling home, trying to keep warm, and kids with music in their ears, the endless flow of songs, and an old lady who said, ‘It wouldn’t be, would it? Would it?’ into her phone, as if it really wouldn’t be. Could it? At Folly Bridge, there were cars waiting in queues, the steady murmur of the river below. Aristotle Hall stood to the north, with its thunderous bell tolling into the mist. One more hour.
*
As the bells tolled Roger Bacon conducted his great experiments on Folly Bridge. Magician, shadow-player, and besides, he believed he could control the properties of light and shadow. He watched shapes dance, realised in extremities of colour. Privation and opulence, darkness and brightness. By this, some said, he consorted with the devil.
Bacon, inspired by Grosseteste, by Alhazen and Aristotle, sat in his perishable tower and looked out at the river. He looked at the sun, as it emanated visible power. He believed that every object radiates a force, or a species, by which it acts upon other objects. Fire by its own force dries and consumes and does many things. Therefore, vision must perform the act of seeing by its own force. But the act of seeing is the perception of a visible object at a distance, and therefore vision perceives what is visible by its own force multiplied to the object.
Moreover, wrote Bacon, the species of things of the world are not fitted by nat
ure to effect the complete act of vision at once. Hence, these must be aided by the species of the eye, which travels in the locality of the visual pyramid, and changes the medium and ennobles it . . .
This was not species as Aristotle used the word, to denote his meticulous taxonomies. Bacon meant a form of influence, and he believed that light was particular and extraordinary because it was a visible force, in which influence was apparent. We can see the sunlight issuing from the sun. But we cannot see the wind.
By conducting experiments based on Aristotle’s theoretical precepts, he learned not to trust Aristotle.
He fell out of love with theoretical precepts.
He proposed that a balloon of thin copper sheet might be devised and filled with liquid fire; thus it would float in the air as light objects float on water. He used a camera obscura to observe eclipses of the Sun.
We know everything through vision, said Bacon, and perspective is the science of vision by which one understands the structure of the universe.
If you do not understand how you see, you can hardly understand the nature of what you see.
Bacon also advised his fellow mortals to protect themselves from malevolent forces, which might destroy them. Do not be exposed, said Bacon, to the rays of dubious planets, and to the inconstant and feminine Moon.
*
All afternoon, I worked in the subterranean café, and I thought about how Grosseteste created his taxonomies of light and, therefore, the world. Without light, we are nothing – In the beginning there was darkness and no colour at all. Then, the early taxonomies of light. First visible light. Incorporated light. Everything which is visible, is so by the nature of light. I spent hours delivering food and thinking that without light, there is no world. No reality – or whatever you call it. However you fashion your phrases, however you refer to the stuff around you. Formlessness. Light and shadow. After a long time, my shift ended, and I walked onto the street. The moon sailed into the sky like a silver balloon – I took care not to become transfixed. We are of the sun, Grosseteste wrote. Therefore, we must turn away from the enticing silver moon. But why? Why stand in the sunshine only? Why defame the beautiful and melancholy moon? I thought about Bacon with his countless theories. I had lost the diaphanous realm, or transparency. The mist was opaque. In this turgid realm, far from God and whiteness, I passed defunct factories, converted into flats, sanctified and purged of former traces. The atmosphere was desolate.
Two stone pinecones announced the place: a terraced Victorian cottage, as forlorn as the rest of the street. Roland Port was a small man with sunken eyes and lustrous brown hair. He had known Solete well, he said. He had studied under Solete, long ago, and they had become friends. He was interested, like Solete, in the theory of species of Roger Bacon. But then, said Port, he became more interested in tangible forms, not forces, or species. He concerned himself with material substances. Wood and stone. So, he became a sculptor.
‘Of course the irony!’ said Port. ‘I began to sculpt the most bizarre spiritual symbol in history.’
The pinecone.
*
‘Pinecones,’ he said, as we moved along his cluttered hall. The place was decked in variations on this prevailing theme. As a sculptor, he was consistent in subject matter. His creations were mounted on plinths, like Solete’s, or were arranged on tables and mantelpieces. His house was small and cramped; its dark rooms filled with Persian rugs, sculptures and pictures. On the walls, as we progressed into his living room, were etchings of the pinecones of history. Port stood beside the evidence.
‘You arrive,’ he said, ‘at the Hall of Justice. Of course, you’re dead.’
‘Naturally.’
‘You have already travelled through the afterlife. The ancient Egyptians were very precise about the details of such a jaunt. Each nobleman, pharaoh, anyone of any remote importance, paid a scribe to portray their journey through the dark reaches of the soul way. The mountainous deserts of the afterlife, where you might be threatened by crocodiles, receive guidance from wise baboons and then battle the terrible serpent Apophis until eventually, if you were careful and did not perish, you arrived at the Hall of Justice. There you spoke the names of the gods, you were powerful among them, and eventually the great judge Osiris, the Egyptian fertility god and also the dispenser of Justice stood before you with his scales and weighed your heart. If you failed the test, you were fucked. And that was that – off to be eaten by devils.’
‘Devils, not baboons?’ I said. Unwisely.
‘The baboons are the good guys,’ he said. ‘The devils eat you. The baboons are sacred and when they bang their chests you bloody well listen. Or you get eaten.’
*
There was a fire burning in the grate, and the room was fetid. I began to sweat. While I waited for Port to make tea, I examined one of his many pinecone sculptures. This one was about the same size as Solete’s, and made of oak, covered with some sort of glaze. It seemed odd to carve a pinecone in oak. Why re-render a natural object in a different sort of wood? I stroked it, found it was sticky, then Port returned, bearing a tea set on a silver tray. He shook his head, as if he was surprised and disappointed to find me stroking his Art, then gestured wearily towards a preposterous chaise longue, in mustard yellow. I sat down, apologising. He measured me with a withering glance, as if he often got these sorts of low-grade visitors, who violated protocols. He sat down opposite me, in a Chinese armchair, with wings that extended beyond his head. In general the furniture was too large for his room. And too large for Port himself, so he looked like a small but powerful god, sitting on a throne.
‘You came because?’ he said.
‘Well, the pinecone.’
‘And you knew Solete well?’
‘Not well. For some reason, he gave me a task.’
‘Well, that will be either to torment you or relieve you from other torments he regarded as more significant than whatever torment he had in mind for you.’
‘Why would he torment me?’
Port laughed. ‘Why the hell not?’
*
I explained about the book, and how Solete had hidden it, or burnt it, or given it away. How I didn’t know. So I was on a quest for something I barely understood, and didn’t know if I would recognise when I found it.
‘Well, aren’t we all?’ said Port. He wrinkled up his nose and smiled. He was quite charming, but capricious. So he had an edge to him, as if at any moment he would abruptly cease to be charming. I admired him, for making so many pinecones. Then, I admired him because he somehow resembled a pinecone as well. He had such glossy brown hair. His olive skin gleamed, as if he had been polished. He was a pinecone obsessive, a sociopath, I wondered, then decided that must be unfair. Anyway, why would Solete send me to visit a sociopath?
Still, he was a pinecone fetishist. Why not become obsessed with pollen? Or blossom?
‘Why do you make pinecones, and not anything else?’ I asked.
‘First of all, why anything? Why get up? Why get off that chaise longue? Why not just sink into it forever?’
‘Because you would tire of me and ask me to leave?’
‘Not even that. You’d tire of your position. You’d leave anyway. And so, we rise into adult life and we fix on an occupation. Or, we get handed one. I didn’t like the occupations I was handed. What do you do anyway?’
‘I wait on tables.’
‘And you do, or do not like it?’
‘Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t.’
‘But if you had been given a free choice about what you did, would you have done it?’
‘No.’
‘Thus, you have been handed something. You wanted something else perhaps, and were not handed it. Perhaps one day you will flip your lid and bugger off, but for now, you go along with it. I was handed something which I didn’t want. I was an academic administrator. I discovered that I hated academics. Except Solete. I wanted to be elsewhere, anywhere else, and so I became a sculptor. At first t
hat simply meant I starved, and lived in a dump, in south-east London, with the poor victims of our nation’s apartheid system. But then, I realised that the pinecone is a form that is imbricate.’
‘I’ve no idea—’
‘You must think of it in metaphorical terms, like a fish. The scales of a fish overlap, don’t they? So do the scales of a pinecone. And thus, these are the classic, Ur-cones. The central cones of mythical history. They are arranged in line with the Fibonacci sequence. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144. Divine numbers. The Ancients who measured and perceived the natural world, and its inherent occult patterns, were completely transfixed by pinecones. Wouldn’t you be?’
‘By fish too?’ I said.
‘Fish, yes. Christ. Fish. And the feeding of the five thousand. And the great fish gods of the ancient world. Poseidon. Neptune. Osiris enjoyed delving into rivers. Fish everywhere. But we’re talking about the Pinecone. And so, the pinecone.’
*
Port sat, beating time with his small expressive hands, and explained to me that the lady pinecone has two sorts of scale. Fishy-pinescale. Quite beautiful. And the lady pinecone has the bract scales, which are leaf-like, and the seed scales which send the elemental issue upon the wind, to burgeon new life, new numerical sequences. The further beauty is that the scales are arranged in a spiral – the ancient iconographic symbol of renewal and fertility. Pinecones open and close to disperse seeds, and for further functions which are botanical and not symbolical and less intriguing to us. When the cone has descended from the tree and lost its attachment to the life-renewing branch, it continues to open and close, depending on whether the forest floor is damp or dry. Closed, damp. Open, dry.
He opened his hands and closed them to indicate the opening and closing of a pinecone. The sun flickered through the blinds and forged pinecone-shaped shadows on the carpet. Dust drifted, along the beams of light. Roland Port marked a circumference with his hands as if he was spanning the pinecone or the world and then said, ‘Cambodia, have you been?’
A Field Guide to Reality Page 5