boat notes 23/12 -
Top deck of the boat, Ha Long Bay. Two lemon trees, the furled mast, red flag with yellow star and yellow flag. All the boats repainted white five months ago so they look 'international standard'. This silence is two or three low, even boat motors, and the water carrying on its whispered conversation with the narrowed base of every rock, each one cedes - 'do not cede upon your desire' wrote Lacan I think but where, why? we curl around the corner of an island, there's the sound of an anchor chain, it's just me up here, the shadow cuts away from the narrowed base to leave the island in relief against bright water. But everything here is dimly green, the smoggy, softly smoggy sky is yielding to the evening. Fisherman shouts a song, whistles across from his yellow house-station, our boat sounds a short, bright horn and it echoes around the rocks. Maybe it's not the fisherman who shouts but the Greeks in their bright yellow kayaks, spooning through the last of the light - not last, yet, but lowering. Lights are up on the mast of the Halong Dragon Cruise beside us and here on our deck by our lemon trees, which I know are not lemon trees - leaves are a little like verbena but in a seven-fingered hand. Maybe chilis. Not chilis. Wicker chairs, concrete slab table top.
A bat complains against the cliff and we're still moving. Kayaks go through a low hole in the rock, life jackets still just picking up light as they move out of the rock's shadows and off into imperceptibility, paddles catching just a little more, a final pinch... It's hard to believe no one else is up here, seeing this. G wrote 'H L B is beautiful, would give you time for quiet reflection.'
Now N is here, reclined on a wicker sun bed, pointing his camera at the sky, now Belle and Andy, friendly and independent at the far end of the deck. N's brought me an amaretto sour, the water's heavy and peaceful, soup, glossy molten iron picking up the boat lights, reflecting them in long smudged beams.
I love people here, I love the way we all want to see this wonder. In the cave - 'Surprising Cave' - the surprise is a stalacmite that looks like a cock, and it jumps out at you as you round a corner into this huge cavern, 200 metres across, with 800 metres of walkway snaking up one end and down the other. Looking down on the streams of people trooping along the walk - it's like the Inferno. But everyone's exciteable, peaceful, capacious and grasping. Graffitti on the cave walls from 1956, 1938, 1905 - crass happy people, taking big bites of wonder and chewing it up, chewing themselves into it. A young fit Greek guy does a handstand at the peak of the walkway - a couple of hundred spectators to see him and laugh! Then our Vietnamese guide does one too, it's better, it's hilarious... I'm complaining in my head about the one boat generator I can hear near us but really I'm happy, happy to be an ugly human ape. N said to the guide, about monkeys - 'really I think they are just bad people'. and H the guide said 'yes, and if you have a beautiful girlfriend, a monkey will like her too.'
Roof of the cave like the mud of a riverbed with the stones picked out, like paint rolled over a lino cut and sucked into soft peaks. The motor sound suddenly fading - they are moving away. Exciting promise of a different silence. The smell of deisely saline comes up, smell of Tryphena Harbour. Cone light on a cliff side. Another boat moves off. The cavern so huge that the stream of humans seemed in scale. Stalactite legs poking through the cave roof, dragon claws dangling down, the spine of a dragon pressing, dripping wax pillars, mysterious drapes.
So much detail, what for? Words for what I see and love? Can I describe it, and then what?
Top deck of the boat, Ha Long Bay. Two lemon trees, the furled mast, red flag with yellow star and yellow flag. All the boats repainted white five months ago so they look 'international standard'. This silence is two or three low, even boat motors, and the water carrying on its whispered conversation with the narrowed base of every rock, each one cedes - 'do not cede upon your desire' wrote Lacan I think but where, why? we curl around the corner of an island, there's the sound of an anchor chain, it's just me up here, the shadow cuts away from the narrowed base to leave the island in relief against bright water. But everything here is dimly green, the smoggy, softly smoggy sky is yielding to the evening. Fisherman shouts a song, whistles across from his yellow house-station, our boat sounds a short, bright horn and it echoes around the rocks. Maybe it's not the fisherman who shouts but the Greeks in their bright yellow kayaks, spooning through the last of the light - not last, yet, but lowering. Lights are up on the mast of the Halong Dragon Cruise beside us and here on our deck by our lemon trees, which I know are not lemon trees - leaves are a little like verbena but in a seven-fingered hand. Maybe chilis. Not chilis. Wicker chairs, concrete slab table top.
A bat complains against the cliff and we're still moving. Kayaks go through a low hole in the rock, life jackets still just picking up light as they move out of the rock's shadows and off into imperceptibility, paddles catching just a little more, a final pinch... It's hard to believe no one else is up here, seeing this. G wrote 'H L B is beautiful, would give you time for quiet reflection.'
Now N is here, reclined on a wicker sun bed, pointing his camera at the sky, now Belle and Andy, friendly and independent at the far end of the deck. N's brought me an amaretto sour, the water's heavy and peaceful, soup, glossy molten iron picking up the boat lights, reflecting them in long smudged beams.
I love people here, I love the way we all want to see this wonder. In the cave - 'Surprising Cave' - the surprise is a stalacmite that looks like a cock, and it jumps out at you as you round a corner into this huge cavern, 200 metres across, with 800 metres of walkway snaking up one end and down the other. Looking down on the streams of people trooping along the walk - it's like the Inferno. But everyone's exciteable, peaceful, capacious and grasping. Graffitti on the cave walls from 1956, 1938, 1905 - crass happy people, taking big bites of wonder and chewing it up, chewing themselves into it. A young fit Greek guy does a handstand at the peak of the walkway - a couple of hundred spectators to see him and laugh! Then our Vietnamese guide does one too, it's better, it's hilarious... I'm complaining in my head about the one boat generator I can hear near us but really I'm happy, happy to be an ugly human ape. N said to the guide, about monkeys - 'really I think they are just bad people'. and H the guide said 'yes, and if you have a beautiful girlfriend, a monkey will like her too.'
Roof of the cave like the mud of a riverbed with the stones picked out, like paint rolled over a lino cut and sucked into soft peaks. The motor sound suddenly fading - they are moving away. Exciting promise of a different silence. The smell of deisely saline comes up, smell of Tryphena Harbour. Cone light on a cliff side. Another boat moves off. The cavern so huge that the stream of humans seemed in scale. Stalactite legs poking through the cave roof, dragon claws dangling down, the spine of a dragon pressing, dripping wax pillars, mysterious drapes.
So much detail, what for? Words for what I see and love? Can I describe it, and then what?
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