Bathing at Delphi

I continue to like Jarman more and more, overturning my earlier irritable disdain.

I have been reading his Chroma, a sort of journal/book of quotes/poetry cycle/death diary, the last book he wrote before he died: it's full of memories and the frightening and painful bits of dying of AIDS, but also full of the joy in colors, the wisdom of a (shortish) lifetime of painting and thinking about colors. I so wish I could have given a copy to my sister Sandy, as she had made a special study of the technology of color – if she hadn't died last December; my other sister would perhaps like it, as she is an artist, but it might not strike the heart of her joys as well.

It is full of wonderful passages; but one that brought me up short is in the chapter on green. It is a short memory of backpacking in Greece with a friend in 1960 or 1961, when Jarman was eighteen; they were on the island of Delphi, lost, late at night, and settled their backpacks and slept by the side of the road. When they woke they were "in a cleft in the mountain. A chasm in which fig trees grew, watered by a crystal spring that sprang from the rock."

They bathed and shaved in the water, washed their clothes – and then were interrupted by some Greeks, who were very angry, then the police came, then they were dragged away and told not to return...

because this was the spring at Delphi, the sacred well of Apollo, where the oracle drank and spoke. Without knowing it.

Although it was sacrilege, although they got in trouble, I was so incredibly envious of him in reading that, I cannot tell you – Jarman himself thinks that is where he got the gift of poetry, of knowing. I think so too.