Perhaps after I have posted Johnny McGoverns elusive and at the same time, fine photographic study of a mysterious West Penwith Well, perhaps when Johnny sees his image of the well, no longer trapped inside his camera, nor floating in the digital ether of his computer, perhaps then he will know if there is actually anything further to say besides, "In this Well did he place a Gothvos stone".
He may recall sensing a spark or smooth coolness in his palm emanating from the stone as he positioned that pebble, although I conclude these scenarios from my own experiences, placing Greenstone for the moment as I have done before but this placing is Johnny's placing, not mine.
The clear photography yields detail but less reliance on spirits and shadows than the blurred Gothvos images taken previously with a plastic camera in Turkey, motivating stories on a cultural, geographic threshold obscured by distorted shadows, bleaching light, desert cedars and resins stimulated by the Sun and the Cicada. In Johnnys photographs the inscription is clear, fine granules of Mylor Slate re-heated by volcanic activity can be discerned, micro fossils and quartz intrusions, A stone material favoured by Cornish Greenstone Axe-Head polishers who gleaned this rock from the now submerged forest quarries of Mounts Bay and Gwavas Lake that have all but sunk and continue sinking.
The well is a water course and the Gothvos Stone represents, (among other things) the votive Greenstone Axe Heads that were evidently positioned in rivers and lakes by people alive in the Bronze Age, to whom we people connect, far greater a connection than through affectations such as wealth or status. I am bending the arc of Johnny's narrative-free activity in order to divine an outer pragmatism, a ritual, a detail of conjuring that I can use as a metaphorical bridge across the marsh of the mythos, where things beyond reasonable doubt risk being taken down "a peg or two" gradually the products and undertakings of these "marshy areas" are treated with more Human-Scale definitions, the few Special things were sacred because they stood out exclusively to those who were seeking them. Those things were blessed although, not by the church. They walked under clearer skies and brighter stars, they drank clear water and breathed fresh air, they organised existence and mythos as the same.
Walking doesn't require navigation, in West Penwith there are many notable carns, cairns and stones with a few church towers, aerials and aircraft tracking devices that are permanent enough to use as simple wayside markers or as alignments between features, Given time and familiarity there are great miracles to uncover from the seasons growth, subterranean water courses, sunken mines and tidal phenomena, there is no reason to rehearse unless the formality of rehearsal uncovers the hitherto unknown, each rehearsal is distinguished by its difference.
The core modus operandi of old ways can never really be known either, each attempt distances the enquirer further and further into amalgamous terra nova as befits the insulations of urbanity and reliance upon some form of capital, this idea seems to thrive once it has exhausted the realms of reason.
How elemental are the constituent factors of this moment drawn of five photographs recording a moment in the event, an assemblage of hewn granite itself an armature for lichen, tendrils and moss, the sod has become mortar for a living organism and yet at its inception it was hostile, radio active and molten. Could the action of an intervention here in this old pasture invite the notion of something other, not just a landscape feature indicating available, potable water, but something more like a portal dispensing or exchanging other than water, is this Dromenon.
Johnny the solitary wanderer Mág Samhradháin on his summery excursions throughout East Breffny (Bréifne), Dumnonia and Kernow, did he navigate, with what did he know his own whereabouts?, his imagination? Did he lay markers or carry devices, yes a box full of air and a smile.
