The heterogeneous is ... resolutely placed outside the reach of scientific knowledge, which by definition is only applicable to homogeneous elements. Above all, heterology is opposed to any homogeneous representation of the world, in other words, to any philosophical system. The goal of such representations is always the deprivation of our universe's sources of excitation and the development of a servile human species, fit only for the fabrication, rational consumption, and conservation of products.
George
Bataille, ‘The Use Value of D.A.F de Sade’
Cave systems allow secrets to be kept. Broken cliffs afford shelter in their crevices, arches, ravines and cutaways. A natural slit in the cliff face, walled off, occupied by smugglers. Relics of the Pleistocene era, trapped beneath earth and rock, petrified: cave bear, hyena, ox, bison, woolly rhinoceros, mammoth and reindeer. Mats of grass, fescue, and lichen spread across distressed limestone. Lizards scuttle over beds of thyme and rock rose. Jackdaws drive out choughs. Linnets and yellowhammers weave through wind-shorn shrub. Kingfishers make their way down tributaries; ring ouzels navigate inland. Snow buntings spotted on Three Cliffs in late October. The hunt of fox and vole. Hard winds full of ice and sleet. Sea plantation and rock samphire seek out sea-spray. Flowers stretch for the sun. Sharp bursts of thrift and squill. Rock plants of sub-aerial scree. Limestone cliffs rise into channel gales. Crowned by a navigational beacon, the plateau curves down from its summit. Life hums and simmers on the exposed tidal channel. Brittle stars lose arms among the rolling pebbles. Starfish stranded on the high shore after storms. Hermit crabs scuttle among the wrack. Gulls pick their way through smashed sea shells and disembowelled shore crabs. The sky near Burryholms blackened with birds. A mass of whirling starlings.
Weeds flourish in the turbulence of
wind speed and wave action. Ice-crusts form in shallow waters. Carrion crows
scour the shoreline and scratch at unexploded bombshells. A wartime artillery
observation post that punctuates the North point. An Atlantic seal stranded at
the cove. Exhausted auks blown inshore by winter weather. Lasso cells catch
prey in the sea rush zone. The milky latex of sea spurge. Clotted seaweed: red
algae, oar weed, kelp. Fragments of razor and mussel. Sea drift, scattered artefacts:
lobster cages, rubber gloves, plastic bottles, knotted rope and Tupperware.
Tides provide broken biros, cigarette filters, plastic straws, gull feathers. A
crab corpse covered in sand-flies. Scatter of delicate urchin exoskeletons.
Clandestine creep of limpets. Hybrid swarm of parasites and scavengers. The
crackle, spit and splutter of rock pools, tide receding. Refracted roar of RAF
jets across the horizon. Monkfish thrown back overboard and washed ashore. Whistle
of oystercatchers in rain. Cormorants perched on the balcony and lantern
balustrade of the last cast-iron lighthouse in Wales. Piles of cockleshells.
Stranded false killer whales. Sawbills and scoter tackle rip-tides and
currents. Seals swirl through a strong swell. Pintail arrive from breeding
grounds in the Baltic. Airborne raptor, dropping, arcing, cutting, ascending.
Looking back through debris on the high tide line.
A school of dolphins play off-shore mid-June. A ghost-grey basking shark glides through gloomy water. Blue lobsters and red crabs scuttle across the sea-bed. Hoverflies, bluebottles, and wasps swarm in with summer. Also: drone flies, bees and green bottles; small coppers and orange tip butterflies; red admirals skimming the sea surface. Groups of free range ponies wander along cliff-tops. Bracken, bramble, gorse and rushes web over moors, invade meadows. Bared soil knotted with delicate flower-trails melts into wheat and barley fields and corn crops. Trace of stream and ditch absorbed by rock. Pasture reverts to scrubland, overrun by gorse, hawthorn and rose. Tussocks of moor-grass and rushes and mossy mounds. Store cattle, wild horse and branded sheep. A stoat atop a telegraph pole. A mob of ravens. Velvety blankets of rare grass and smooth lids of algae. Cuckoo flower and silver weed. Freshwater swamps, ravenous bogs. Sand hills sprinkled with birch spinneys and willow slacks. Oscillation of wind-combed dunes. Rusted barbed wire and bonfire remains like sacrificial residue. Arid sandy slopes. Dry dune meadow. Misty skyline. A medieval sea wall colonized by thistles. A village lost inside dense woodland. A house that was a hotel. An abandoned quarry. Barrows, dolmens, menhirs and castles. A calamitous Norman stronghold on a cliff: the castle that is haunted and cursed, and its story. Lost links and folds of time eclipsed by flora, wood and sand. Crumbling walls, leafy lanes, coils of road and hedgerow. Farmland that ends at a cliff face. Caravan sites, villages and hamlets. Bare paths and car parks. Land Rovers, Range Rovers, a bottle green Jaguar, a red Alfa Romeo. White sails, anchored yachts, fishing trawlers, and a handsome ferry. A tidal island, a sweep of sand, a range of dunes. Expanse of mudflats and estuary. Wooded cliffs on the North shore merge into coal fields and hills. Across a stile, down a muddy path, between gorse and nettle, dancing past adders and grass snakes. Very smooth pebbles; a brook full of ferns. Cut drainage channel and a sluice gate. A sheltered bridge quite high above a stream. A small church hidden in woodland by the side of a loud, open bay of jet-skis, speedboats and windsurfers. Light showers and dewfall. Transparent slats of sunlight through crowding cloud. The escape of dappled spots. These turn to shafts. These turn to bursts. Then sheets. Still until the incoming tide laps your toes. A gull perched on ragged rocks. There's a music of
thrushes cracking snail shells open on tarmac paths and discarded bottles. There's the art and order of erosion and accretion, for example, the succession and balance of deconstructional and constructional waves, dragging and depositing material, wearing down the angles, displacing and replacing, with no total loss or gain of material. There is the sea eating away at limestone shelves with random appetite and unpredictable attack. There is the crenellations this creates; the refuge, nests and hideaways. This is the living space between creation and waste; of birth, death, folklore, legend, tragedy and shipwreck, holiday and labour, migration and passage.
Not surprisingly, there are a number of legends associated with the monument, the most popular being that the capstone was once a pebble flung away by King Arthur, who found it in his shoe while walking in Llanelli. The stone is also claimed to have been split by a blow from Excalibur, Arthur's sword (or according to a later variation, by St David to prove it was not sacred), and that on Midsummer Eve the stone goes down to the Burry stream, to drink.
Paul R. Davies, ‘Historic Gower’
08.09.03
