Is the engineer, perhaps, not God’s right hand? The face behind the mask of Thoth? The Hermes without the give-away winged sandals? The enabler of Artists; Promethean in his accomplishments (he doesn’t have to invent the fire just make sure it gets to our kitchens before dinner). Providing we manage to undo him of politics, mind you. Reading “Solar Bones”by Mike McCormack and sponging up the summer heat I am planning to develop a newfound respect for these people I used to find overly pragmatic and fairly humourless. So petty to generalise. But I don’t get out much.
Lascaux cave painting by Mariano - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
I check the weather app, possibly the tenth time today. Am I incredulous about the temperature? Am I measuring my perfect poise by degrees? It is something I never do (unless it rains at 2 in the morning and it’s pouring into my kitchen: I’d like to know when I might be able to expect to stop bailing and can take off my wellingtons). In a day or two this heat will be over and then we have the same old again.
How I adore this heat. It is so exotic. I wouldn’t travel for it, mind you, but as it is here I take it as very special – even if it might be foreboding the Apocalypse. I am apt to call this weather portentious: it is carrying something. Maybe my grief for a bit.
Maybe I love how everybody else seems to be very fed up with it: too much of a good thing. Not enough time to acclimatise. Infrastructures haven't been built for it. Blahdiblahdiblahblah. Excuses for not being able to cope. Ha! Caught you all out! Thought you were all of a superior class, didn't you...?
Have we got an Engineer’s Day, already? Have we room for one between National Sunscreen Day, World Braille Day, Safer Internet Day, World Poetry Day, Mother's and Fathers' and Children's Days?
The engineers – while the lucky few artists take centre stage - are greatly overlooked and exploited, Solar Bones brings to my attention. (A masterpiece, indeed, the cover doesn't lie.) They are the ones who give us bridges and drains and glass-fibre networks.
Without them, I venture further afield, we wouldn’t have had Impressionism! We’d only have caves with hand paintings. No museums or undergrounds to get us there. No new Paris for Renoir and Monet to paint. No Pissarro in France without the steamer that brought him out of the Virgin Islands. If they hadn’t built factores, he would never have had paint tubes and the collapsable, portable easle (let alone the flange that creates a FLAT brush: for more expressive strokes for strokes’ sake) and none of the Impressionist orgy would ever have come off the ground (eventually) to liberate our souls. Ok, and none of this would really have come about without the labourers…. And we’re back to why we have May Day .
In any case let’s rank the engineers over the architects who pretend they can put fences up with a pad and pencil. Definitely let us put them in a league ahead of lawyers who are probably born too stupid to do anything else than point fingers at who dunnit after it all falls down on top of Humpty Dumpty, who must be a doctor for sitting on the fence all along.
I am up a large portion of the night ponderous on the lightning without thunder. My app didn't forecast this! Will my parasol be blown over and my cushions get soaked? I try to recall Fleetwood Mac, the gods of my first spouse; they seemed to her founts of eternal love and mystery. I can't say I ever listened to all her bootlegs and live recordings, or maybe not even every album they recorded, but I do recall:
Thunder only happens when it's raining.
And Lightning . . . . lights up the night.
But in two different songs. I have learned since then, that the band was not a shining example of eternal love themselves. I take the lightning as a cue to a hard and fast conclusion that's not taken me long to figure out. Checking apps is for numpties: the sky is right outside your window, at three in the morning it is time for rest, and they really never will tell you what you really need to know.
In a flash of my own I acknowledge without understanding that I am starting to see something emerge out of the unknown. It is too dark to see, so it must be that seeing that is still only believing. I know from experience it could take another seven years or so before I find a way to get to it. There is nothing to say it isn't just another swamp monster, either. Here's to hoping for something more light-footed. Who wants another dead end?
Is it why I have been practicing knots† all afternoon in the near 40 degree heat, as if I am planning to sail the seven seas or join the queue on Mt. Everest?
I set my wool aside and pick up Thomas Merton to help me bide my time in contemplation.
This is a building project (from the floor up) in Geneva Switzerland phototgraphed by Samuel Zeller@samuelzeller. I clearly am not an engineer for I cannot imagine what is being built here.
