Whitewash
Whitewashed walls wrap round me. They are devoid of decoration – save for the prints of left-behind blue-tack and the scuffs where my white chair has scraped away the paint to reveal a glimpse of the old fluorescent blue of my brother’s childhood bedroom. White walls, white bedsheets, white curtained windows.
Without impression, the room is neutral, completely absent from the chaotic maze inside my brain where entwining plans and theories want to seep through my fingers to the keyboard. Bursts of colour agitate my mind which, unless acted on quickly, become quelled by the repetition of white, white, white. I tint Microsoft Word backgrounds, highlight in blues and pinks and greens, pin post-it notes of excellent fluorescence. But words become wracked with white.
My wearied eyes find the corner, where a jagged black crack splits the constant. A chasm from this world to the next – from one life to another. Where does it lead to?
The rich smell of the
caramelising of sugar
and the roar of a round of applause drift from it.
The rapid staccato notes of Entry of The Gladiators are struck with confident trepidation, drowning out the applause. I am catapulted,
clinging nimbly
to a
trapeze,
soaring above
upturned faces;
expressions astounded, as I blur past vibrant reds and blues. Cartwheeling past me are rings of fire, as I
s w i n g,
my body pirouetting around ribbons.
The crowd cries and then cheers as I spring from one trapeze to another, the bursts of brilliant yellow and orange licking at the
space
I have left behind. Pink clouds of candyfloss wave in triumph below me. I can taste its sweetness as I am
somersaulting,
oscillating,
spinning,
flying,
gliding.
Calling to his audience, the ringmaster tosses his red-ribboned top hat. “Ladies and gentlemen, the spectacular,
S
P
I
N
N
I
N
G
SENSATION, all the way from Maidstone, Kent, Ms Louise E Goswell!”
He JUGGLES his HAT with HIS golden CANE.
Breeze brushes my blushing cheeks as I skim the air above them, gliding from
one side of the tent to the other.
Its canvas walls are striped: red and – my grip loosens and…
I am falling,
plummeting down.
I pinch my eyes shut
as I hurtle to the ground.
Red and white. Red and white. Red and white, white, white, white, white.
Louise is in her first year of a PhD at Loughborough University, looking at the post-war idolisation of female, F-Section SOE agents through critical and creative practise.
The image is by Omeiza Haruna who is in his first year of a PhD in graphic design at Loughborough University.