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.

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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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