The Lake
Spacetime co-ordinate: Strängnäs, 1985
“Phenomena are the ontological inseparability of intra-acting agencies.” (Barad, 2007)
It’s a warm summer day.
The wooden jetty, with its weathered planks,
form a spacious but contained surface.
Around it, down below—
the warm grey freshwater broken by reeds.
A rowboat tied with ropes.
At the far end, a ladder.
The adults in swim trunks—Speedos.
Swimming runs in the family.
They laugh. Talk.
Adjust a few loose boards.
Discuss whether to clear the reeds.
One crouching with hammer and nails.
The other standing, arms crossed.
The boy steps out onto the jetty without drawing attention.
Still a child.
Not expected to help with repairs or maintenance.
As the older cousin balances her way out, the attention shifts.
Talk of reeds and boards falls silent.
Gazes turn from carpentry to sunlit skin.
They follow her along the planks.
From their perspective—a catwalk?
“Damn, look at those tits!”
The words are hurled into the sunlight.
Perhaps with the implicit aim of reinforcing male camaraderie.
But spoken too loudly.
They seem to fly past her.
Instead, they strike the boy.
Create dissonance in his body.
I think of how, as Karen Barad writes,
the world consists of phenomena
and that meaning emerges through intra-actions of people and things.
In a material-discursive practice,
language, actions, and matter constitute each other.
The words—on the jetty, in the sun,
interrupting the hammering—appear as an incision.
They make me.
They make the boy.
The words also make the fathers.
And the cousin.
When she dives into the water,
gazes and conversation return to planks and nails.
As if nothing had happened.
