Vampire Teeth

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Vampire Teeth

This being Halloween, what could be more appropriate than this delightful product?

The teeth are soft, the gums pliable, both deliriously sweet with a little lemony zing: wonderful. It's lovely how they melt into little gelatinous bits in your mouth, how your saliva transforms into a sugary sauce.

 You could really go crazy on this stuff, and if I hadn't had the privilege of a repressive Scottish education I would surely have devoured the entire pack in one giant scoff and gone back for all the rest in the shop.

The appearance is not charming though is it?  Be honest. It's foul. There is something very nasty about detached body parts, even when obviously manufactured. And this is the case no less when they are eaten than when they are used for other functions (yes dildo manufacturers, I am indeed looking at you). 

And why "vampires"? The canines are hardly developed. I suppose the cannibalistic aspect of vampirism is present in the idea that you are consuming another's flesh but you wouldn't, no matter how hungry or devoutedly Transylvanian eat another's teeth, even those of the fairest peasant virgin in the village. I hope not, at least.  And you wouldn't eat those of another vampire...or would you?

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Pencils in a biscuit box

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Pencils in a biscuit box

The pencils are sleeping. They`ve been sleeping in this box since at least the mid-nineties when I received them following the death of  Wladysław Bednarowski, a Cartesian philospher. There is a lot that could be written about Bednarowski.

I recall in this order: his love of Wagon Wheels, Fanta, his slip on suede shoes  and fondness for brown,  his enthusiasm for French culture, how he fought in the First World War and escaped from a Hungarian prison, his slow, heavy speaking style which made me think of a slow rural bus, the small terraced house on Aberdeen High Street which he rented from the university, his enormous and ever expanding collection of art monographs, his thick, at times bulbous features; and how, with age, his figure became increasingly hunched and how this had the effect of emphasizing the length of his arms.

I remember receiving chocolates every Christmas which he would pass at our house wearing a dark blue suit and bow tie. He drove a red MG for a while, I think.

I inherited a great many art materials from him. He said that when women were wanted to cheer themselves up, they bought hats: he bought art materials.

.

The pencils have an enchanting, dryly woody smell, not so unlike cigars.

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Jelly beans

 

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Jelly Beans

These are a nice size in the hand with a pleasing  shape. 

 They are shiny and smooth but the inside is slightly grainy in the mouth, and when that grainy stuff melts in your saliva it becomes a sugary paste. This isn't disagreeable by any measure. It feels nice to crack the bean shell in the teeth- somehow transgressive given how perfect the shiny bean shape is.

They're in bright children's cartoon colours. There isn't much difference between colours of beans when it comes to flavour, with the exception of the light blue which is aniseed and slightly medicinal: in other words, a delight. 

Note: there is is no black. The question of the absent black is interesting because it seems to me to be a missed marketing opportunity- I state this based entirely on memories as when I was a child the black sweets in packets were prized far above the others, and I even suspect the manufacturers played a sort of game by not distributing blacks too commonly, so children bought more packets just to obtain them. 

However, their absence may be no bad thing:

https://nypost.com/2017/04/06/mans-jelly-bean-obsession-nearly-kills-him/

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A natural bower

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A natural bower

A dance took place, girls holding branches, garlands laced in their hair. Their dresses were white. It was first a circle dance, then became a weaving and, laughing, they passed through an arch made by two of the party with sapling branches. 

It went on like that then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, disappeared into the woodland.

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Pink flower

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Pink flower

 

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Touching things

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A pencil

Touching things

In other people`s apartments, I pick things up, weighing them in my hand and holding them, to better understand my hosts and their environments.

Things I like to hold and inspect are mainly small hard items made of metal (preferably heavier metals), wood and ceramics. They include: items such as rulers, tools, treen, shells, eggs, coins, compact hardback books, cutlery, little bottles, ceramics (both earthenware and porcelain such as eggcups, tea saucers, porcelain animals), smaller cameras and candlesticks. I like pieces of wood cut into blocks, seeds, marbles and polished stones. 

Weight and texture then are factors, as is the function of an object. There is something extremely pleasing about the potential in tools. When I pick up the green Faber Castell pencil, and hold it as if I were going to draw I can feel myself mentally preparing to draw: it is as if the pencil itself is compelling me. I 've seldom held firearms but when I have, I have also similarly, and alarmingly felt impelled.

Things I don't like to hold and inspect: items excessively imbued with the identity of another: documents, letters, cosmetic containers, medicines, things made of cloth, anything revelatory of their sexual inclinations (however banal), medicines, clothes of any sort. 

Regarding this last: second hand clothes appall me. This is entirely rational because second hand clothes carry the traces of others not just in their fibres but in how the clothes have reshaped to the bodily form of another. 

Modern detergents, such as Persil Automatic, are very efficient, and can probably remove most human residues: skin particles, hair and bodily fluids such as sweat, mucus, saliva and semen. 

However, the evil secretions that our bodies produce when we engage in wicked thoughts or actions are impossible to dislodge by even the most advanced soaps and remain deeply embedded in the molecular structures of textiles and leathers, however carefully we may clean them.

Felons have their clothing removed on entry into jails. Ignorantly, however, our authorities do not destroy these' clothes. They remain, festering, in storage for felons to collect on completion of their sentences. Hence, our high levels of recidivism.

By wearing second hand clothes you can readily get what in Scotland are called The Jandies-  a curse transferred from the body of another. 

Now, having read this, you will surely start to notice how those who wear thrift shop clothes or hand-me-downs often display pallid expressions, facial tics, skin blemishes, poor teeth, ungainly bodily  postures and even speech impediments. Things are never truly well for them and they are constantly grumbling about this or that or the next thing.

I used to know a large family in  Aberdeen, in North-East Scotland, whose youngest child, as an economy, was forced to wear hand me downs. I never saw the boy without a cold. Sniffle! sniffle! sniffle! and always a droplet of snot billowing, ballooning, ready to fall from his nostril. He came to our house and almost immediately broke a vase- he was, awfully, accident prone, forever with a sprained this or broken that. He had few friends. When he grew older he became addicted to drugs, and had endless difficulties with the law. He is currently on probation for a clumsy attempt to steal a car.

You might remark that these unfortunate phenomena correlate better with poverty than the wearing of used clothes. To counter this, let me draw your attention to the practices of aristocratic families. These do not lack money but, nonetheless,  customarily hand clothing as heirlooms to their offspring. Thus, their children become the bearers of diverse psychological weaknesses, most apparently tendencies to alcoholism, depression and distasteful sexual urges. It is thanks only to their privileged position in society that these ill-effects do not cause them more damage.

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 Read to the Detroit Writers' Group, 24 March, 2021, Pinellas Group July, 2023

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Trunk; St Sebastian

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Trunk

 St Sebastian

From Wikipedia;

"Sebastian had prudently concealed his faith, but in 286 it was detected. Diocletian reproached him for his supposed betrayal, and he commanded him to be led to a field and there to be bound to a stake so that certain archers from Mauritania would shoot arrows at him. "And the archers shot at him till he was as full of arrows as an urchin is full of pricks, and thus left him there for dead."Miraculously, the arrows did not kill him. The widow of Castulus, Irene of Rome, went to retrieve his body to bury it, and discovered he was still alive. She brought him back to her house and nursed him back to health.

"Sebastian later stood by a staircase where the emperor was to pass and harangued Diocletian for his cruelties against Christians. This freedom of speech, and from a person whom he supposed to have been dead, greatly astonished the emperor; but recovering from his surprise, he gave orders for Sebastian to be seized and beaten to death with cudgels, and his body thrown into the common sewer."

When taking the photo, I had a recollection of a work by Redon, that peculiar and very marmite* artist, whose work captured me in my late adolescence.

I found four Redon paintings of St Sebastian being shot, but when I looked at them  I found less similarity in them to my trunk than I had expected. I believe I conflated various pictures by Redon. His Sebastians feature trees but these are not close up like my photo, though the Saint Sebastian (1910/12) in the National Gallery of Art, Washington has the long rectangular format.  There are several Buddha which use a single tree a but these do not feature close views of the tree. 

Closer in spirit and composition are some of the artists's noirs: the magnificently titled lithograph I Plunged into Solitude. I Dwelt in the Tree behind Me (1896) in the Art Institute of Chicago; and two charcoal drawings: The Trees (1890s) in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Tree (1875) in the Art Institute of Chicago. There is also the cover of In the Dream, a set of lithographs, (1879). In 1883, there is an Angel and Demon.

There is also a painting of the martyrdom by Gustave Moreau, an artistic predecessor, of Redon's, depicting the martyrdom with a large tree behind- it is much like a deposition, with the saint being assisted by two women. Neither Moreau and Redon give detail to the body of Sebastian. Instead they try instead to create the atmosphere of a spiritual event. 

 I was  right to recall that he had his saint killed against a tree- as indeed do many others (some however, use columns, often supporting crumbling structures, as execution posts). The tree, when specified is a Laurel.

Depictions of the martyrdom occasionally show the archers (Signorelli (1441-1523)), while others go closer up and depict the martyr with arrows piecing him. This is often a little bizarre. In Mantegna's painting of 1459, in a feat of archery, an arrow has pierced the martyr's forhead and exited through his neck. Matteo di Giovanni (c.1430–1495) shows the saint walking easily though there are arrows penetrating him.

The subject should allow a range of extreme identifications: of courage, resistance, of sadism, or indifference to pain, or spiritual victory. But few artists show much emotion in Sebastian's face other than a vaguely defiant aspect, as if he is simply refusing to pay for a dessert wrongfully placed on a cafe bill. Or, as with Guido Reni's post-execution picture (1615),  he's looking skyward wth a God, can you come and untie me now? It's been over half an hour and here I am still with these darn arrows expression.

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 *there is, for sure, a histrionic quality in Redon, hence, perhaps, his appeal to adolescents. Personally, I still get him 50% of the time. The drawing is often awkward: sometimes that's effectively naif  and sometimes that's an obstacle.. The melancholy that pervades the best work seems to connect with lived experience and, the sense of humour meeting the macabre is fun or silly depending on one's mood. The blacks are dense and entrancing but I find his colours garish. I adore the titles.

 Julian Barnes writes enjoyably about Redon in his excellent Keeping an Eye Open

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Yellow flower

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Yellow flower

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This is the first of a pair of flowers that was found just over by the highway.

It reminds one of the underwear worn by prostitutes in brothels in Westerns doesn`t it? Or perhaps seen in the Moulin Rouge?

Those extraordinarily baroque bloomers, stockings, bodices, petticoats and corsets, with ruffles in satin and silk, then lace.

 So many layers, ribbons clips, buttons to be undone. 

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Amore

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Amore

These sweets are better than the real thing- not so tart. There are black ones too, but I thought the red photographed better. 

I take a long time to chose the sweets which hamg in a row in a local shop. It sells a weird assortment of undesirable goods- ugly ceramics, hideous plastic flowers, readily destructible cookware. 

How they decided to sell sweets is beyond me. But there is a row of about twenty packets and although the shop has very narrow aisles and is tightly stacked with  the aforementioned rubbish and God knows what else, and I feel quite claustrophobic and irritable, I cannot help but take a good deal of time deciding what to chose.

I swing from one choice to another then  another then back again: licorice balls, or amores or banana candies or sweets in the form of eyeballs or teeth (yes teeth!)...

Paying in the shop taked an eternity because for a good many customers the function of shopping and specifically visiting this awful shop is mainly social and they try to engage the saleswoman  (who in fact isn't friendly in the least) in dialogue. For some reason it takes them ages to get their payment cards from their purses and put them in the machines and they must narrate each action in detail. It takes forever for them to discuss whether a bag is necessary, and a further eon to put their purchases in the bag.

Anyway, eventually I've paid and escaped from this vile shop, and though wearing my COVID mask, I'm too overwhelmed by relief and happiness to wait until I get home and, tearing a corner, of the plastic packet, I sneak one of the sweeties under my mask and into my mouth and dream.

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Getting lost: some notes: part 3

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Log

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9. Worst places for getting lost (not in order): Marrakesh, Venice, London, Tunis, Lecce and Istanbul. The souk in Aleppo deserves special mention.. You could go completely insane there. Flatness, high walls a lack of reference points, and an absence of straight roads are common factors.

Excessive sameness is confusing, as in the endless whiteness of Lecce or when I once tried to find a friend's  house in Wandsworth while only having a general notion of where it was, to wonder up and down God knows how many streets of 1930s semi-detached houses.  

But disharmony can be as confusing as sameness. The visual cacophony of Sao Paolo makes it utterly baffling, such that it can give you a headache, and is rarely alleviated by nature (usually  Brazil's aesthetic savior).  London is hard because there are so many streets which appear to be straight but which, in fact, bend so that you walk under the impression that you are, say, going north, but really are curving a constant but subtle northwest. This can drive you a bit crazy.

10. Grid plan. Yes it's easy, but there is that very strange thing where you get out of the metro and you walk a few blocks in the wrong direction...

10. Relief. But one is never lost forever. At least not in the city. In the woods, however, I did at moments feverishly imagine that I might be lost forever, my emaciated corpse discovered by dogs in in a bush only 20 metres from the path as the newspaper headline breathlessly exclaims. But to find the path, to become unlost,  is as mysterious for me at least as being lost, akin to picking the right key from a ring of keys and silly me....then! Hey presto the door opens. Relief is conditioned with amazement. 

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Getting lost: some notes: part 2

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Leaving a forest

Getting lost: some notes: part 2

6. When I ask for directions people are invariably very pleased to give them. Giving directions is a way of giving advice and this,of course, is an extremely popular human activity. I think it gives them tremendous pleasure to see how lost I am and thus confirm how they aren't lost at all and what fine people they are. They love how attentively I listen, how important their every word is. They love to detail exactly which junction one should turn left at (the one after the garage...) by which point I glaze over and start to become lost in the instructions themselves,  quickly confusing one corner, garage, set of traffic lights, corner shop, sharp bend, estate agent, big tree etc with another. Sometimes the direction giver is so overwhelmed by the desire to help that they offer a second option, or you could take the second left......and, needless to say, this is utterly disastrous.

 They also love to use you being lost as a vehicle for other conversation and find out where you are from. This seems very popular in Brazil and can be charming. 

7. There is that weird thing where certain cultures consider it shameful not to be able to help, and thus in response to where is the bus station will reply, straight on turn left, or a vague, but enthusiastically stated over there, all the while beaming at you, despite not having the least idea where your intended destination lies. And thus you find yourself wondering into some huge slum. I've heard this is common in the Far East but in Peru this happened to me, in Santa Cruz, twice. 

8. You can't miss it. A fatal expression

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Getting lost: some notes: part 1

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Spreading Tree

 

Although I have been to the woods many times I can still, bizzarely, get lost. I got lost about two months ago. I have very little instinct for direction. I can even get lost in Manhattan with its absurdly straightforward grid plan. I guess some of these things will become less familiar thanks to google maps.

Getting lost: some notes: part 1

1. There`s always this weird point when you realise I am lost. It comes as as a revelation, sometimes gradual (shouldn't we be there by now?) or sudden (isn't that the river?). Or that horribly perplexing Venetian experience: O God, we're back at the square!

2. There must be a moment just before where you are lost where you weren't lost. So are there a daze moments  where you are sleepwalking. 

3. Retrace your steps. This is extraordinarily depressing. It means accepting that you've wasted time and energy and there is moreover no easy way ahead, no short cut. Also it means seeing everything from the a 180 degree turn and this is, in itself, confusing.

4. Getting lost is much easier when you are in a place without a thing high above to refer to. Marrakesh is like this, there is no tower or hill and the network of tiny streets is quite extraordinary. In additional, all the buildings are painted a similar dirty peach colour.

5. Some say that men are too proud to ask for help when they get lost, and that women do not mind. Perhaps women don`t labour under the societal expectation that, as a gender they shouldn't get lost and therefore feel no shame in asking for help? Certainly, I dislike asking directions. Partly this is, indeed, pride, and the issue is exacerbated by the fact that I am hopeless at following instructions of any sort except possible food recipes. 

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Bouncing balls

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Bouncing balls

I suppose with the increased use of cards fewer of us leave the shop with change and consequently are far less likely to insert coins into these excellent machines to receive, from a metal, shuttered orifice,  our bouncing balls. 

This is a pity as these bouncing balls are superb. They are in a wide range of stunning colours and patterns: striped or marbleized or even weird faces or skulls. Most have a smooth surface, but others are lightly mottled.

 And they have the loveliest smell, a rubber-plastic chemical scent so divine that the first thing I do on getting mine is to hold it against my nostril and inhale. For those moments I feel utterly at peace with the universe.

And...they really do bounce extremely well, reaching phenomenal heights and then bouncing repeatedly with hysterical unpredictability over and over so you have to be careful about bouncing them outside the shop as, for sure, they will bounce onto the road and you`ll feel compelled to run after them, perhaps (alas!) into the bumper of an oncoming car.

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Vargem Grande, evening

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Vargem Grande, evening

There are some smallholdings and houses. Boggy fields with bits of rubbish strewn here and there. Soft hills in the background. 

There is a stables here. Two children rode past on bareback. They were laughing. The kids here seem to be jolly without that air of menace that British children sometime bring.

It's a pity the evenings aren't longer here, it's such a kind time of day.

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The beginnning of a story in a notebook

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The Beginnning of a story in a notebook

He was never a close friend of mine - he had charm and I have always believed that charismatic people should be kept at arm's length.

I first knew him at university. I would not have spent time with him but for a chance meeting on St James Street near Willow's.

This is the start of a story -uncompleted- which owes, or promised to owe- a lot to F.S. Fitzgerald. I did complete about twenty stories, of which maybe five can be reread without wincing. I often started them in these little notebooks which could be carried around easily. 

One set of stores was called The Annie Stories and consisted mainly of very short dialogues in various settings - cafes, parks and so on, in which she showed her sympathy for her friend, the narrator. I think the Annie character was similar to Mr Rabbit, in the beautifully named Charlotte Zolotow and  Maurice Sendak's Mr Rabbit and The Lovely Present crossed with Richard Brautigan and maybe a dash of  Salinger's sister in Catcher in the Rye. In idle moments, I think of resuscitating these but usually when I think like that it is because of sentimentality and not because the idea has a relevance any more.

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I've always been interested in very short forms,- the Haiku, the very short story, the limerick,  aphorisms, fairy tales or parables- which are often characterized by wit, and a refusal to preach. And with these pieces, I suppose I'm trying to continue this with little reflections and digressions to accompany photographs of mainly, rather modest items and the thoughts they bring. 

The photo gives a starting point, and usually I start by responding very simply to what the picture is of. Then, later, when I am relaxedly engaging in other stuff like folding my clothes another train of thought enters, often with some force, to augment the initial, often somewhat banal offering. Sometimes the train of thought presents an idea so personal that I worry that it might be too revealing of some darkness in me, or some wicked actions I partook of. But that would be my own affair.

Far worse, were it to cause some needless unhappiness in others. It isn't right to say something nasty just because it is true, or because others might enjoy reading it, or because it will gain an audience.

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Landscape

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Landscape of a tree

Imagine if, by some peculiar and, most likely, unpleasant turn of events, you became very very small, so very small that each of these cones was a mountain, and you lived here, eking out a livelihood in the grooves and ridges of the bark? Naked and cold.

What with the rain, flooding every cranny with dreary force, farming wouldn't be much of option. You would be better to forage, seeking fresh bacteria in those woody valleys. Or to scrape into the surface with your tiny nails in the hope of some edible slivers.

Where would you live? In a hovel made of grains of bark, or could you find a crack and slip into it every night for safety?

An ant casting its shadow on your home would represent a divine terror. You might live in fearful reverence of these vengeful creatures, with maggots, spiders and bees as other deities? Would you, weekly, present them desperate offerings: fresh piles of microbes and bacteria on rudimentary alters? Accompanying these with solemn pledges of love, of obedience, much mournful singing, and prayers that one day you might return to your previous, innocuous existence as a kitchen fitter or marketing assistant or suchlike (only now chastened, resolute in your humility before the Divine)?

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Vehicle

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Vehicle

I don't get what this thing is for.

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Piglets

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Piglets

At first I thought they were baby hippos, but according to the packet they are piglets.

The baby colour is effective though and as kitsch mini sculptures the manufacturer, Docile Alimentos of Rio Grande de Sul, can be proud.

However...these are not as nice as their other sweets. The taste is the same (sweet + lemon) but the shape is not right. The irregular shape of the piglets just doesn't feel at all good in the mouth. And passing your tongue across is rather hateful. I think our mouths desire regularity in the forms of sweets. That's surely  why pastilles and gobstoppers are so pleasing. The shape sensation of these piglets is so unfortunate that one wonders how the makers didn't realise. 

Well, should you happen to receive a pack perhaps as a gift then the best way of consuming them that I found is as follows (I advise you use a timer, as one's instincts seem to lead one to forge to hastily ahead):

Place one the piglet on your tongue

Leave it there for up to 15 seconds

Draw saliva across it with a sucking action. 

Repeat the sucking action every 10 seconds very slowly for a minute

Move the piglet with your tongue to the your cheek, leave for 10 seconds

Shift piglet  to your molar . Chew with a single very gentle jaw action

Repeat 15 seconds later.

Ditto, until the sweet is gone.

 

The great advantage of this technique over chewing the piglet the moment it arrives in your mouth is that is that the it will not then immediately break into tiny but surprisingly hard fragments, from which it is much less easy to satisfactorily extract flavour. 

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Stem; photography and painting

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Stem

I don't know what this it, and I'm not sure how I came upon it.

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Something I like about photography is the ease with which detail is described. The camera is an instrument and it allows one to see better.

This might seem terribly obvious but if you have been painting for ages it is really a complete reversal of the relationship you have with your tools. Painting cannot be revelatory in this way; what you get on the painting is what you put, gradually, and that process doesn't bring the artist many surprises about the motif.

 With photography you ca go in with a lens and then in again further enlarging when editing on the computer. Into other realities.

This process of revelation is nicely demonstrated in examinations of the "Badgeman" photo, in relation to the JFK assassination.

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The branches of a bush

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The branches of a bush

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Matches

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Matches

While I was taking the photo series from which this was selected I thought of the Nicholson Baker book, A Box of Matches and his books and how they sustain still life in prose. 

These sit rather snugly here in their purple box-, regal indeed. There's something profoundly satisfying about things ordered neatly (there is an excellent Tumbler site with this title Things Organized Neatly, which deals with this theme) and the effect is enhanced when the things being ordered are identical. 

Excessive order, however, becomes monotonous, and even unpleasant. Germanic.*

I think I like seeing things in boxes, but I am not sure. I can see how putting things in boxes could become obsessive, one of those low key mental afflictions that alters the lives of its subjects in subtle but immensely damaging ways. 

I can believe that there is a pathology associated with boxes and that it starts with cute  jewelry boxes and inlaid Indian caskets and ends up with body parts being found in shoe boxes in semi-detached suburban houses far out on the Metropolitan line.

* My father once explained to m brother that Germany was such an orderly county that car wheels there were square, which of course he continued to believe for years after.

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Stamp album

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Stamp album

I'm fairly sure this was bought around 2005 in a little Asian corner shop on Stroud Green Road (but it might have been in 199, in  Bayswater where I used to hang around a lot for no reason other than that I find the wedding icing architecture and generally forlorn atmosphere there quite enchanting. I`ve always been attracted to melancholy places, I`m not sure why. But Dear God I hope Bayswater hasn`t become trendy and cleaned up- though given the charmless recent development of blocks just up from Paddington I suspect that`s a vain prayer).

Either way, the shop seemed to have stock dating back to the early 1950's;  This could be found, feeling sad, on a shelf down near the floor. As a result, of course, I couldn't resist going in whenever I passed and buying things like this gem, or little red and black notebooks which had been most pleasingly bound with thread and had soft, yellowing pages. 

The album is not large, 5,25 x 6.5 inches and has a coral pink cover of textured cardboard. It`s really nice to handle, fitting perfectly in one`s hand, and is a good size for a small collection.

I already have a stamp album and several albums of matchbox labels and I am not sure what I might use this for, except maybe leaves or pressed flowers. or some Mystery Items which have yet to Reveal Themselves, but when they do will make me and the album feel complete. 

Anyway,  I ought to fill it soon because it's starring at me like a hungry child.

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Cat

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Cat

This cat is following me around. But it tries to pretend it isn't by taking a convoluted path, going up and down trees and circling under bushes like a insane detective. He knows I'm up to no good. 

Finally, he feels the need to act. He settles on a stump, tetchy. His tail twitches. 

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Chickens

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Chickens

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The big cock, a bellicose brute and a serial rapist, is locked away in a fenced area.

 The chickens are free, in paradise. They run about, pecking gaily. Maybe they should form an independent republic?

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