Scotland 2002

	Up an avenue of twisted trees, A stone cold sunlit church And seven ancient sunlit stones. All-powerful Chi-Rho - A glowing sigil etched on the landscape - Two thousand annums old and A third of the planet knows the thing it Stands for. A topography littered with steel traps, Invisible red signs and so many Broken stones - If I could only Gather up enough the fragments would reveal Traces of ancient letterforms - Nordic inscriptions, Pictish cuneiform - Whole coastlines reenacted, Cliffs, bays and promontories Rebuilt and then rebroken. Every time we throw a stone we realign The Universe: A granite diaspora. THIS MONUMENT HAS BEEN ERECTED. "As a lesson to posterity, never to lose or abuse those glorious privileges planted by their labours, rooted in their suffering and watered in their blood."
	Images: A bridge to nowhere - all rails torn out, Left to decay beneath the feet of Families, dogs, scab ramblers. The first here struggled to live on moss, Bogside mouthfuls, clinging to rock's edge, The point where Earth meets Sky. In some places, as at the bridge, Time has come full circle. Once built; abandoned - the valley left, Arrived at, and passed over. Only the skeleton remains. A grave stands on a low hill. A walking stick, like corpse beneath, Is cased in rock. The block of land Is hollowed out, notched, made comfortable For stony flesh. Family plots like ciphers - Morse codes in earth, computer punchcards, Sequences of printed genes.
	Landscape of Paranoia, abuse behind Lace curtains, mirrored windows, Reflecting back only bare mountains. Cold hands on silage trucks, Mud-ridden paths on tarmac, The kick and bite. Women - Always women - tied in the stream, Cold water rising to block mouths & noses, Cut off lives, words, histories. This monument has been erected In memory. Slate cold skies and clouds Frame memory's erection. Here a Scottish martyr was condemned For not renouncing one creed for another. This Circlet of turf commemorates Oppression: First God on Man, then Man on Man, And last, the worst, of Man on Woman. They drove a stake into the riverbed And tied her to it. I'd kill him Who heard her say "Please. Not Me." And still flicked the knife. Women, always women, tied in the stream. To that moment, as bubbles break The surface, and cold steel presses the flesh, This monument's erected.
	I see in my mind's eye the landscape Blazing - I can fly above it, Swing from it, survey, delineate Contours, rivers and valleys - Earth becomes a mutable thing, Stone wills itself another form. I have become obsessed with signs, Hidden initiatory carvings, Coded on beach pebbles, Waystones, gateposts and fences - Bishoprics, millenia old, melt into Yesterday's tourist graffiti. The log in the fire is wrapped in newspaper. Still cool and damp inside, it burns with a Steady flame. Sparkling pinwheels of embers Revolve, hiss, move lightly across the surface. Hiss of moss burning, Earth aflame. Heat, biomass, frozen in sod - Made solid. Spirit imprisoned in matter. Earth, Air, Fire, Water - only ignition Is required to exchange one state for another. The process of initiation.
	So many images encoded on a simple landscape. The light that glowed - bright sunshine that Caught and held us all against the sky. The ache of miles replaced by ecstasy, Nights, bedded together, before the fire - These are my signs. I have laid chalk Traces on almighty stones: marked and recorded The paths taken and the roads between. Nothing remains save recollection, and the Pouring over of old photographs. Creetown, Carsluith, St Ninian: become Names, References - points of view. "We got to get to Galloway, Tonight..." INITIUM... ET FINIS Long granite roads begin to fade. I take my chalk And write my name into the Earth.

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