Another Brick in the Wall

Walls. What is “wall”? Is it a mental block where you are struggling to find the words to express ongoing emotional mayhem? Perhaps it is the concrete shell of a house which needs styrapol, glue and render to protect it from the elements? 

Or even better, maybe it is an absence of wall, where one has fallen down.

One of our dry stone terraced walls was damaged by an over-exuberant man with a digger. The gap wasn’t huge, probably about two metres and a metre high, but it was causing soil to fall down from the terrace above. There was also the issue of a wild pear sapling growing out of the foundational wreckage. That had to go.

In my current state of mind, where everything feels impossible, this terrace wall offered an opportunity. A way to take something which is broken and sad, and turn it into something new, permanent and beautiful.

***

Flashback - Hey Teacher!

For once, I felt prepared for some practical work. Back in the summer, I had attended a drywall workshop on the Island of Brač, so I had confidence and know-how about tackling this job.

The leader of the group showed us how to select pieces of stone and slot them together like a 3D jigsaw, ensuring stability and attractiveness of the construction. Not only did it look solid, it was also functional. With the right slanted placement, the stones were able to trap precious rainwater and ensure it ended up in the cistern at the bottom of the property.

Over the course of a weekend, we built nearly half a kilometre of stone wall. And more importantly, a group of twenty-odd strangers created something truly beautiful; ancient and modern, immediately becoming part of the local natural landscape.

***

Back at my own gappy muddy hole, I contemplated the small enormity of the task. I was definitely lacking my own group of volunteers. Digging out two square metres of soil suddenly seems like a lot of work. 

Over the course of previous weekends, I had been digging out random stones and tidying the overgrown green edges of the entire length of the wall, from the well to the bottom of the field.

As a result, I had a useful collection of small, medium and large building materials that I had put to one side for my rebuilding project. 

More alarmingly, in the meantime, I had found four snake skins, several grubby things, lots of yellow centipedes, and a few angry but sleepy spiders.


“Snake skins?”, worried my man. “With a diamond pattern?”
“Yeah several, about four of them, quite big. They were hidden in the greenery at the base of the wall around the well and up to the vegetable patch. Do you want to see them?”
“No!!! I have told you before, I am never going into the field during summer,”as he disappeared back up the scaffolding, bucket of glue in hand.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. This hole wasn’t going to dig itself. I picked up my motika and I started hacking the soil back to make a clean base for the stone. The piles of earth, stones and tree roots grew all around me and suddenly there was nothing in my head apart from dig, move, throw.

The basic mechanics of moving, making and moulding the ground into something useful was hypnotic and suddenly the work wasn’t hard, it was meant to be. It just was, and the mental walls in my head were finally breached.