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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