Yesterday, in the hot afternoon sun, my dad and I demolished my rotten, round, six-seater picnic table. At first we could easily rip off sections: seats, planks, whole arms. The heart of the table, however, was screwed together with approximately 2000 rusty screws, so for that part of the demolition my dad ripped it apart with his axe, violently tearing away at the wood while I prayed that the axe would not go flying from his hand.
I have recently finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, and while we were working on my picnic table a scene from the story popped into my head: after Dorian has murdered Basil, he blackmails his friend Alan into disposing of the body. Alan, after only 5 hours using chemicals and a fire place, manages to get rid of any evidence that the body ever existed. There is literally nothing left of Basil. He was methodically and even scientifically demolished until he was nothing. Just like my picnic table. Where once a carefully put-together object existed, now there is nothing. (Though the remnants of my picnic table will receive a proper burial in the Altona dump, Basil never gets the obsequies he deserves.)
Altogether a powerfully pervasive connection, and now that scene haunts me even more.
No comments:
Post a Comment