FLIP Project Space presents  Tessa Lynch and Zoe Paul 

—

Tethered

I walk every day at the same time for around an hour.

Mostly I see dog walkers, joggers and mothers pushing prams

each, I’ve noticed are tethered to something;

a lead, a pram with a strap,

earphones, a backpack.

 

While walking I find myself thinking not of the exposed tree roots

or the shifting skies

but of intimate interior spaces;

the pile of dishes in the sink,

a table strewn with papers and apple cores and dinosaurs,

an L-shaped room.

My nosy little vice is peering into windows

often the basement flats of other peoples homes,

and wondering how they keep their orchids alive.

Imagining what it is to be in

that life framed in those photographs

arranged on the polished baby grand.

 

I always thought walking was a liberation from domestic space—

of those great flâneurs who flitted between streets

being seen and seeing.

Walking in that philosophical manner with the head tilted, just so.

Nature, Architecture, Urban design, The Human Condition, all crystallised in the faceless crowd.

But like those others on my walk I too, am tethered

by last nights greasy strands of spaghetti that lie waiting

limp and coiled in the sinkhole.

 

I almost never encounter another me

no solitary women without apparent purpose – to jog or shop or mother

I look for her, in the streets, parks, back-lanes and renegade desire-lines

but I never see her

and wonder if I did..would she see me too?

would I smile the way I oddly do

to dogs separated from their owners,

as we pass one and other by?

 

With each step, the shake-down takes me deeper to

that quiet root inside

to think deeply about sinks and skulls and those greasy antennae

growing in abeyance back at home.

 

Sometimes, to ease the monotony of washing dishes

I think of sinks abandoned:—

those piles of dusty plates with decaying debris

from the cobwebbed Xanadu

or Calamity Jane’s neglected cabin

before her womans’ work was done

 

and somewhere in that arid space of frozen time

I locate a little joy

in the feel of my pink hands guddling in the hot sloppy suds

and in the purposeful sounds of rummaging, rinsing and draining.

 

Coiled and redundant I leave the spaghetti with those suds

and I go for a walk, to get away, be away

and disentangle from those strands.

I tilt my head, try to fall into a thinking step

and my mind returns to those great flâneurs

of Benjamin, De Quincey and Baudelaire

and wonder if ever they thought

of the spaghetti strands in their sinks,

waiting back at home.

 

For Tessa Lynch, L-Shaped Room, Spike Island June 2017*
Rhona Warwick Paterson

 

The text “Tethered” is by Rhona Warwick Paterson and was written in response to Tessa Lynch’s L-Shaped Room exhibition at Spike Island

Zoe Paul

Κουτσομπολιά: Γλωσσοφαγιά
Koutsombolia: Glossofagia

that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees, was all about me,
that I couldn’t see.
The forest was dark and crowded with trees and they were all screaming at me
the forest was dark and damp and the shadows lept and the branches crept
and they were all directed at me.

then one day i looked, in the middle of it all and there,
there wasn’t even a tree

the branches i saw didn’t care at all and the roots had dried, there was nothing inside
and there was barely anything left of me

the waters had died all caresses subsided, no more voices lied
no more i spied

Koutsombolia i stumbled and fell
Glossofagia and ate my own tongue
Blue eyes turn black, its safer like that
and somehow, I’d broken the spell.