The Beetle Was There First

Something is written in the bark of a fallen pine. Lines branch and fork and curl across the pale grain, hundreds of figures, some of them repeated. A name, an instruction, a warning. I keep coming back to one question I cannot answer: is it a blessing or a curse?

A Scots pine had come down more than a year before, and its bark had begun to lift. Underneath, a beetle had eaten its way through the soft wood, gnawing its slow path, leaving this script. It drew without knowing it drew, the way I try to draw without knowing. Its tunnels look like the writing of a tribe nobody has met, like petroglyphs scratched into a cave wall before language was written down. I stood and read it, and could not decipher it.

The beetle had finished its sentence long before we arrived. Later, on a fine spring day, the four of us stepped into that same language. The Spanderswoud forest near Hilversum holds a clearing reached only by ducking along narrow paths; the air smelled fresh among the trees, and few people go there. Rik, Miguel and I started at once, working with whatever was at hand. I had brought only a small bundle of sisal twine. Out of branches, leaves and moss a composition slowly took shape. We barely spoke. Branches were bound with sisal; short cut lengths became small yellow curling lines on the green moss. At a certain moment Miguel added a few written letters on small papers. David remained deep in tai chi, moving his arms through the air without a plan. It was a new way of working together, beautiful and unforced. When I returned two months later, the large forms on the forest floor were still there. Just like the beetle's sentence, waiting in the bark to be spoken aloud by someone who knows how.

This was the third of four sessions in April. Rik Lina and I form CAPA (Collective Automatic Painting Amsterdam), which a few years ago merged into the Cabo Mondego Section of Portuguese Surrealism, led by Miguel de Carvalho. The others took place at my studio on 18 April, at Rik's studio, and after a concert on the night of 24 to 25 April.