Movement

 

Waterdrop, photograph by Bridie Harvey, circa 2014

Readers of this column, their eyes blinking at original adjectives, have grown used to me quoting admiringly from the English version of ‘El Quadern Gris’ of Catalan author Josep Pla. This voluminous, captivating journal, written in 1918 and 1919, is a constant surprise. A page curves into a wave and subsides again as I turn to the next. Here is Josep on the 10^th of October, 1918, not that long ago when you think about it, wrinkling your nose: “Machines have progressed in leaps and bounds, and are capable of astonishing movements one never could have imagined. Nonetheless, I don’t think that machines, for all their sophistication, will ever imitate the very peculiar, very funny, very endearing way that cats’ (especially kittens’) ears wriggle.” Even the idea that machines progress in leaps and bounds must be called into question, given most of them have no limbs, and none have a heart. As observers understand, meanwhile, ear wriggling and twitching are signs of cats’ thought patterns and emotional well-being. They are relaxed. They are attentive. They are autonomous and independent. They are paragons of natural movement. They are at home in their human habitat. Other body movements add to their comfortable repertoire of domesticity: quiet paws, weaving spine, languid tail. At the same time, Josep’s brief observation is making a larger point, or perhaps that’s a swerve, or giant leap. Our world is shaped by machines, but they are so predictable. They are normal as a car, uncomplicated as a computer screen, dumb as a CCTV. We expect nothing out of the ordinary from machines, their progress ever a case of purpose meeting need. Even the most animate of machines is never going to speak. Their discourse is a non-event, no matter how many odes are writ ironically in their honour or spontaneous reviews exclaimed as they emerge from their packing case. Ode to a Light Bulb is a fairly one-way engagement. Readers might be familiar with Ode to the Photocopier. There are whole books full of odes to the steam ship, in photogravure and objective correlative. But we stray from Josep’s essential swerve or leap, which is movement in nature, starting with the fingers tapping this essay on a somnolent keyboard, drifting with eyesight to the garden outside where grass, every leaf and bud is yearning for sun and raindrop, then birds resting on the fence as they watch in several directions with quick looks and eloquent claws. The book is a machine, of course, and thousands of them are devoted each year to this matter of movement. Science textbooks are their own kind of ode and we read them occasionally to upgrade our knowledge of how nature swims, swoops, flowers, leaves, wriggles, twitches, yearns, folds, leaps, bounds, tails, clouds, and so forth, though encyclopedias digital or print are immoveable, unmoving entities compared to that which they describe, that we observe for minutes or hours, like Josep, quite able to discern a machine from the real thing, be it peculiar, funny, endearing, whatever next.