Back in 2009, my father made several references to my “Simpsons challenge” in Through the Sandglass. Having found several tenuous connections to sand, I cannot tell you how delighted I was, years later, to finally share this clip with the Sandman:
Thankfully, my dad’s slightly obsessive arenophilia brought to light far more engaging conversations about geology than most made-for-school film reels could – I am not including the ever-frustrating “spot the fault line” game on car trips/hikes by the way.
(My dad and me on Jebel Toubkal. 1995)
Recognizing a fault line, GoogleEarth quizzes, love of a good IPA, complaining about scrums in rugby union - these are just a few things my father has left me with and I know that his passions have reached beyond his immediate family. This concept is beautifully illustrated in an extract from the final poem in Michel Faber’s Undying: A Love Story:
If I could scan this planet
with X-rays that detect the presence
of your timely interventions,
I'm sure I'd find them
in places you would not expect.
You're dead. I know. And it is not for me
to show you death is not the end.
But you left lucencies of grace
secreted in the world,
still glowing.
My father was meant to be the keynote speaker at “The Abundance and Scarcity of Sand” symposium hosted by Atelier NL and MU as part of Dutch Design week in 2017, but died just prior to the event. I want to thank Lonny, Angelique, and Denis for honouring his dedication to sand and keeping those lucencies glowing. Below is the link to the symposium and his final talk that I extracted from his dictaphone.
http://www.ateliernl.com/lectures/the-abundance-and-scarcity-of-sand
I will never research and write about sand like my dad, but he has left with me the habit of always carrying plastic bags in my pockets to collect and catalogue sand on my travels. And his travels continue as my mother and I take his sand (it is grain size that matters, not mineral content so some of his ashes are sand) and scatter it on our travels. Next Estonia, then the Gobi – Michael adventures on….
