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The Lord of Ravenswood (tragic hero of Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor) rides to avenge the death of his love. He rashly cuts away from the firmly packed ground where the sand meets the cliffs. He veers across the open expanse of the beach, and vanishes. Quicksand. Lord Ravenswood’s disappearance is abrupt and entire.The beach: a meeting of substances, a mixing, a wearing away. Sand shifts, rubs, drifts. Water flows, spreading itself out over the sand, smoothing, erasing, pulling silty gran-ules with it as it ebbs. The beach is a place of exchange where two substances come together, mix, and separate, each marked by contact with the other. Quicksand is a mixture of these substances — it is both water and sand — and yet it is neither water nor sand. It is a third substance. Undisturbed, sand and water maintain a balance, both present but not distinct, reliant upon the persistence of the other. Agitation alters this relationship separating water from sand; the land moves, ripples, opening a gap into which the walker sinks. Quicksand is both elements and both substances, it is the promise of solid ground and the subsequent rupture of water and sand that, in the case of Lord Ravenswood, swallows a man (and his horse) whole, in an instant. Quicksand is deceptive, unassuming, a perception of solid land that comes to life when stimulated. The separation of sand and water quickens the substance. The ground produces signs of life as the body is absorbed into living ground, becoming part of the landscape.1 Consumed. A monstrous incorporation. |
