When I was younger, in a time only remembered now, Mam and Dad would often suggest, without any hint of intention, a family trip abroad in which, by doing so, would set us free from regiment. I would depict to myself a world outside of my own, endless and full of warm delights that sought my eating them- with a teacup and saucer they sat waiting- one need only have put that world onto my saucer and I would know then it must in fact exist and is truly there for my taking. These pastries, profiteroles and their relatives, close cousins and sisters, were bought for guests during the weekend, for it was a family custom to always have visitors and Mam would do her utmost in preparing a work of her own exquisite art. For this reason, the pastries were never an existence I felt truly tangible, for any glimpse I caught of them, in their garments of cream and strawberries, seemed a bittersweet lemon on my tongue, the citric of which pinched me back into the grey kitchen and quenched my hopes of that paradise that awaited them, the centerpiece of Bosch's Earthly Delights, which I was forever excluded, to know of but not to touch. This uncertainty of pleasure's bodily form was, for a brief instance, dispelled when I found myself on day's where, to my golden luck, it seemed a pastry was untouched because of it's dampness, it's stickiness, and so as Mam brought the saucers and trophies lined with fruit through the kitchendoor after the guests had left, and I spotted that unwanted profitaroll, I would bound forth to snatch it from the shining chinaplates, like how a dog; knowing it did wrong, would burst into the garden and drop the bone or treasure it had claimed to its feet, and any attempt at taking would send a shiver of joy up through its legs, snatching the bone and shot around the garden with its tail beating wildly. That was the nature to whom I was bound, for the lack of fine things makes them all the more valuable, as Mam limited my supply of pleasurable treats my demand for such rewards increased, and led to me hawking the living room from the staircase, four steps up, through a crack left in the door, and secretly trying to twist the will of my mother's friends to avoid a profiterole, to convince them that they were mistaken, and it really did look sticky and the chocolate was melting; and so I hawked their desire in an attempt to satisfy my own, trying to willfully bend theirs to feed mine. That conflict of interest between Mam and me continued until I left home, finally set free from that chastity of splendour I had lived, as a Monk may have, I thought, or one devoting themselves through passionate abstinence of greed, to an existence grander than they; yet I, for my foulness, was purely and thoroughly devoted to that splendour of pastry my Mam never let me behold, and although I had left home, the child of Fishguard me and the memory-me behind, that nature of seemingly compensating now for my lack of delight then, was not to leave my side. And so it accompanied me, seeking a pastry here, once setting it's lips upon it saw over the horizon a larger pastry, a larger delight that I must work toward. In this way, I found myself seizing Mam's forbidden pastry from her grip and stood in the Gare de Dol de Bretagne. I had arrived in Saint-Brieuc and had spent most of my time around the Plage du Valais beside the Gouët, having found appropriate stay for a twonight and then by bus, a fine car de tourisme, was to seize Rennes and it's fruits; its pastry, in my fist, straight from the hand of my Mother.
The station itself was modest in size and of the genus of those pictures one oft sees of that land of Paris, and as my fingers may rest on that brief solidification of desire, would instill it and it's contents deep within my mind. I could find the architectural commonality of the buildings close to the Gare de Dol de Bretagne and that land of exquisite pleasure that was beside, yet not on, my saucer. I could in fact see the shadow that the sun cast upon my little plate of the buildingtop skyline that one may see approaching that great Kingdom of God from a carriage window as one's existence expounded itself upon the walls of the approaching Paris as if to call "Make room, excusé moi, is there a free space?", and you would call to its existence as a whole as if Paris itself would shift slightly for you to bundle your limbs into that warm space she had made for you.
I had no issue finding room in the Gare de Dol de Bretagne which, not being of a presence as heavenly as that of which I glimpsed Paris in, but of a more humble sort, of more gentle kindness than the extravagant charity that the world oft worship, the Gare of Bretagne could be trusted upon as a friend rather than the sacred being of a Paris station who would give you her soul but not a smile. It was in this way the atmosphere of de gare enveloped me, with a seal of red wax gilded in gold, and I bowed graciously in merci for this acceptance. One which was not oft to be expected by that of which Mam and her friends would greet me with if I had boldly found courage to tail a waiter by the flap of his blazer through the dualswinging doors and engrossed myself in the warm air of cooling pastries fresh from a boulangerie en bas de la rue earlier this evening, mixing in the fragrance of lilac and cigarette smoke of an expensive brand which Mam oft told me to fetch for her in the summers we spent a la jardin, and this scene of my mother and her friends was being weaved tightly together through conversation of a languid sort compiled of brief remarks on the weekly events and of church le prochain matin. Father would often spend these evenings on the patio reading a book of poems or other by the likes of Charles Bukowski and occasionally reclined his neck to see the lamplight of the room that was slowly filling with smoke, and then sipped a wine that would not, since a time before I had noticed it, leave his side thence on. It would be some years until I found his books that had been stained in wine both red and white, which I could then differentiate by smell, as Mam had gradually become more lax with the wines left in the kitchen, and I began to see unfold before me those evenings as I flicked through my father's old books which he had laxely sunk and seldom returnt. There was a certain intimacy to be found in reading those same pages, the ones that his fingers once touched and rolled over and brushed off after staining it with one such thing or other, and I found him, in a way I had not know before as a child, as a man, of a being compiled of essence that existed outside the subset of 'my father' which I had not, until then, glimpsed. This intimate revelation set about the urge to seize that which my mother had forbidden to me since a young child, and that of which I had slowly to understand, had forbidden too my father, save for the evenings alone in which he reclined on the patio- covered from my mothers gaze through the haze of smoke that began to press upon the window- in the wine bottles left out on the countertops cooled by their marble and nestled thenceforth in my father's possession for that evening.
In this way, I found in the Gare de Dol de Bretagne that image, or essence rather, of my father's secluded heart that lay dans le campagne at the outskirts of my mother's bustling heart that filled itself with gossip and newspaper features of so-and-so and what he or she had said or done in the public eye. That house of cigarettes, pastry and small parties in Fishguard served as a taste to the Saint-Brieuc buildings that enclosed the mouth of the Gouët. Which, like my home in Fishguard, I would too leave for the open sea, for a pastry slightly larger than Saint-Brieuc. And de gare I found myself at now was that spindle fibre that bridged the distance between me and Rennes and would slowly contract and pull me toward its nuclear centre; as I slowly made up the distance between my father and my mother, and their firm, mutually beneficial divide. It is such that I hope to find a way to resolve their conflict in my heart, to resolve a conflict that may well have been left in their will for me, to bear their silence on behalf of them.
Yet, in my memory glimmers, like sapphires and rubies amongst the rocks they have been fused in, those special days where they put aside their pact of silence and for my sake rented a small fishing boat and we spent the day on the water. Buoyant in our little ship, if a wave were to hit it's rib it would send some saltwater inside and land cunningly upon my bare feet and Mam's white frilly dress. The water was also a source of stains and weathering that my father's books would be burdened with; his copy of The Great Gatsby, which I had seen him read three or four times over but ought be much more, was to be drenched that day and when Mam had told him to leave it by the fire that evening, it had dried and Fitzgerald's world stuck together like a siamese twin and there was no separating page from page without fear and inevitable destruction of the lived value that had been deposited, by my father, within the book. So he kept it like that, fused together not daring to differ the single pages and only of larger bodies of text 30 pages thick could they be salvaged and thoroughly operated on in his surgical precision for the memories he had instilled to Fitzgerald, and so if one was to read it now- an unlikely case save for me alone- would find the text abruptly refusing to let you follow the intended narrative and suggested an experimental version in which from Nick's remarks on Gatsby we are thrust inside his extravagance, then tossed as boats asunder from the wave, to M. Gats showing Daisy (a character who, in this rendition, loses much significance as her relationship to Gatsby is to be expelled into those inseparable thickets of paper) his fantastical palace (that, too, feeling only a mere stranger as if Gatsby had shown me the Gare de Dol de Bretagne, of it's wondrous pillars and ensured brilliance whilst I, who can find the value in this building he praised and stand within, struggle slightly to fully assimilate myself into it's magic and will forever, as I'm sure Daisy too felt, remain a stranger to this abrupt castle devoid of any significance to me or Daisy alike than that of whom shows me it) and then for that castle sequence to be severed in two and me and Daisy find ourselves amidst that sweltering day atop The Plaza Hotel bathed in ice and tension, and then there is I feel a questionable choice of editing that sends us to the final few pages- before the notes that often accompany republications of classic books- just in time for us to glimpse that green light and become "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" and I find myself halting and aware that my father must feel disappointed to me that, in his good intentions he paved this book's way to destruction in one sense, and somehow still managed to give me a single memoir it somehow feels, as if these pages that were cast to the thickets were not necessary to understanding what my father wanted to tell me, and that what is left is wondrously all I need to understand about him.
Mam would scold him like a child if he missed the chopping of the wave and sent us near-sideways in tumult, and with an unintelligible sigh, yet I know now it undoubtedly was made, he set himself back to work in attempts to accommodate our day out with our, me and mam's, specific needs and desires that regardless of which had came out on top- which was always my mothers- would go counterways to my fathers wishes of returning to the shore; for his book was now ruined and reality had instilled itself upon his mind once more. I was, then unawares to the tension that was felt around me, peering down into the water trying to spot a Loch Ness monster's tail or fin or his winking eye that would insist on keeping him a secret to that of my mother's scrutiny of such existences, yet I needn't have worried for I seen no such treasure that invaluable beneath the waves; only some muddy grey mackerel or the like that was neither excited about the boats presence or excited the boat by his, I simply seen him swim by in the direction of the bay, of whom we had undocked from a few hours earlier, and thought of how he may be the fish that I will find its way into my sandwich on Sunday morning.
That boat- with my father at the back attempting to maintain a smooth experience for us both, and my mother with her cigarette sat neatly within the graceful index and middle finger- from the back, the bay that I see now in reminiscence looked like the view I seen approaching Saint-Brieuc and from the front with my mother I can only see the buildingtops of Rennes or Paris- for they are indistinguishable at this distance- that once, long ago, when I was in that present moment, must have been water bounding out toward the horizon. It looked spoiled, as if Caspar D. Friedrich was living now and knew only views such as these city-skylined ones and so his romantic masterpieces were to be betrayed by a second existence, as well as the sublime, that tainted it's presence and may very well have shewn away the sublime altogether. And so, those views that lay behind my mother and father were ones fitting of their presence alone; as if my mother was made for the Paris-tops tainting Friedrichs work and was perfectly at home in this image, one that was of infinitely more value to her than that of Friedrichs original- be it the Seashore by Moonlight or Moonrise Over the Sea or another- for the main difference being her presence that occupied, and seemed to swell the canvas. Whilst my father was depicted turnt over, away from our gaze, hiding in his duty of the water, and Fishguard painted in a haze some distance back, a composition that leaves one to wonder where they ought focus their attention.
Bien que, say there be a hypothetical existence observing my family and I from the side, and had the convenience of stilling the water in a way easy to paint that scene. Perhaps then, he may capture a beauty that I, as an individual within the scene, fail to notice. Perhaps he decides the sky is a tinge greyer than I had thought, and thus adds a more melancholic connotation to the piece that serves as pathetic fallacy whilst simultaneously illuminating our trifling scene on our petit bateau, with my dad bent over the back and my mother in her defiant matronlike manner, a shivering few dashes of a lighter grey against the somber grey-blue background escaping from her cigarette. He may then focus his attention on the water that made us act so; and by doing so find a dull drunken-grey mackerel that weaved within the wave that shook us so. His presence, the poisson, poising the water around him a shade darker than it would have been on this day, and the water beneath our boat was dulled and depressed a few gradients of colour below the rest of the water, who having found light, seemed to smile in their colour of the clouds tinged with saltwater blue, and offer a more appealing lieu de repos for the gaze than the tempest clouds that seemed to rumble with sublimity and menace. A family was seen there in a little rocking boat, like a rocking horse I had found myself on as a child, yet now I was grown bigger and sat with my family and faced this rocking boat together, yet apart, as parents éloignés, with my mother's position at the bow finding its place closer the centre of canvas than me or my father, who was composed working hard at the astern, keeping us steady, and my face, this peculiar observer seemed to capture it as not even my mother's dressingtable mirror could, gazing closer the direction of the observers eyes than either my mother or father dared, for my body being even smaller against the tumult resounding above us caught the attention- I'm sure the painter thought- of an observer, and entrusted me, or the child who was once me and his dim red woollen jumper, the noble duty of being that who the observer can confide their empathy in. Mais it was the dynamic of my family as a whole, to be sure, that was what interested this vague observateur who captured my family et moi du côté originally. My father wore a smudged grey-weather jumper that was only visible thanks to his brown jacket blowing up his back as he lent, bent away from us still, expectedly, and myself, the jumper that now donned a few tints of vague green for contrast and shading, in denim dungarees unbuckled and resting at my waist but only peaking above the boats' withering wood, with my hair blowing afrenzy as I shone my moony face into the gaze of the painting, two thirds lit up by a light source outside this observer's vision, and my mother with her back to this ambiguous light, her wet frilly dress of a white as if she wore a cloud- one of a more distinct white than any resting amongst the sky- with her hair flicked, or had been tossed by a wind, to the far side of her face allowing us a glimpse, yet without help from the light, and so it seemed she remained ambivalent, to everybody but my father and I, and perhaps the mackerel who was barely visible yet undoubtedly swam beneath us, or perhaps he bore us on his back, and under the strength of natures Sisyphean waves and solidity we felt safe to bicker about in the clouds, about nothing in particular, and yet the painting managed to make it seem as if we bickered of infinity itself, and about the collective hardships of man, perhaps that observer thought such, perhaps he had painted everything in the world except for this scene and we were merely the crown jewel to his own achievement, yet we shone with a humanity distinctly our own, we shone with an understanding only we could understand on that boat, and we shone in our way, each of us, the distance between our smiles not seeming to matter all as much, and by doing so, whilst bow is far from astern, and Paris is a long way off Saint-Brieuc, we shone for ourselves and our humanity, and we shone on behalf of humanity, and we shone together, beneath a tempest tumult we were boats, borne back ceaselessly into the past, as we struggled yet survived the present and I, alone, peered forth to a future, marked of splendour and pastries that awaited me, that would attempt to reconcile these clouds and bring a warmth to my lips that reminded me of my mothers paradise filled with smoke, and my fathers soul confided in The Great Gatsby with its pages stuck together, and perhaps a pastry or two would suffice in accompanying me to Paris, as it brought forth figures in a light I had not before known, and that filled me with a little hope; perhaps I hoped for the mackerel or my mother or my father or my pastries, but regardless, I shone with a hope revealed to me in the secret pages of my father, and I alone, with my face two thirds lit, yes, the observer painted me shining.