Essay
Two Days at the Black Sea
在海边的两天
The bus leaves Plovdiv at eleven at night and reaches the coast around five, which is a stupid way to travel and the only one I could afford. I had a sketchbook, two pens, one unfinished block of linoleum and a change of clothes. The block took up more room than the clothes did. I stayed awake most of the ride, listening to someone's phone and watching dark fields slide past.
You can smell it before you see it. Then the road turns and there is the water, grey-blue and enormous, and for about four seconds nobody on the bus says anything. I swam the first morning before the sun was properly up. It was so cold that I made an embarrassing noise, and then I stayed in anyway, because getting out is the only part that requires courage.
Salt, Sand, Wet Paper
Drawing on the beach is mostly a fight with the paper. Wind lifts the pages, sand gets into the spine of the book, and the salt keeps everything damp enough that the pen drags. I gave up on being careful. Those two days are smudged and gritty, and one page has a mark that is either a wave or my thumb. I like them more than anything I drew indoors this year.
A clean sketchbook has never told me anything true.
I drew the same stretch of shoreline four times. The first was what I thought the sea looked like. By the fourth it had narrowed to two lines — the edge of the water and the wet sand beneath it — and that was enough. Printmaking teaches you this slowly. The sea taught it in an afternoon, mostly by refusing to hold still.
My shoulders burned on the second day, because I am tall, pale and stupid about the sun. I sat under a concrete breakwater with a wet shirt over my head and kept drawing. Some kids were jumping off the far end into deep water. I drew them badly, eight times, and not one looks like a person jumping, so that is a problem to solve later — on a plate, in a cold room.
The bus back was overnight again. I got home around six with sand in my shoes and a sunburn I would complain about for a week, and I pinned the four shoreline drawings above my desk before sleeping. One of them is going to be a print. I don't know which yet. That is the part I like — carrying something around for a month before you cut into the block.
中文译文
大巴晚上十一点从普罗夫迪夫出发，五点左右到海边。这是一种很蠢的走法，也是我唯一付得起的走法。我带了速写簿、两支笔、一块没刻完的油毡，还有一身换洗衣服。那块版占的地方比衣服还多。一路上我基本没睡，听着某人的手机，看黑下来的田一块块退过去。
还没看见就先闻到了。然后路一拐，海就在那儿，灰蓝，大得离谱，车上所有人大概有四秒钟没说话。第二天一早，太阳还没正经升起来，我就下了水。冷到我发出了一声很难听的声音，然后还是没上来——因为上岸才是唯一需要勇气的那部分。
盐、沙子、被弄湿的纸
在海滩上画画，大部分时间是在跟纸较劲。风把纸页掀起来，沙子钻进书脊，盐让一切都潮乎乎的，笔下得发涩。后来我放弃了小心这件事。那两天的纸页蹭花了、磨得糙，其中一张上有一道印子，是浪还是我的拇指，我说不清。我比今年在室内画的任何东西都喜欢它们。
一本干净的速写簿，从来没有告诉过我任何真话。
同一段海岸线我画了四遍。第一遍画的是我以为的海。到第四遍，它只剩下两条线——水的边缘，和下面那片湿沙——这就够了。版画是慢慢教你这件的。海只用了一个下午，主要是因为它根本不肯停住不动。
第二天肩膀晒伤了，因为我个子高、皮肤白、对太阳没脑子。我坐在一段水泥防波堤底下，湿衬衫顶在头上，继续画。几个孩子从那头往深水里跳。我画得很糟，画了八次，没有一张看起来像一个人跳下去，所以这事以后得解决——在一块版上，在一间冷屋子里。
回程还是夜车。六点左右到家，鞋里全是沙，晒伤够我抱怨一个礼拜。睡前我把那四张海岸线钉在书桌上方。其中一张会变成版画。哪一张我还不知道。我喜欢的就是这一段——把一样东西带在身上一个月，才终于下刀。
