Stairs, Canasvieiras

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Stairs, Canasvieiras

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Green leaves

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 Green leaves

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The Picnic on the Island

 

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The Picnic on the Island

This is a memory of a pleasant afternoon I once had. 

I'd been working with VEM Engineering for some months, but I knew only a few people there: most were still nameless faces.

At a Party

We were at a party. "We" means me and Tom; Tom, whom I'd known for Lord knows how long. 

I was dancing in the living room with a very small man: Tom was laughing in the doorway, "the way you move your arms when you dance is so ridiculous. You're just like a penguin."

Anyway, the small man became tired and so now Tom and I stood chatting near a sofa in which two women lolled, one in black and one in pink.

"You get the one in pink," whispered Tom.

I looked across as discreetly as I could. He hadn't left me the prettier, of course. That was to be expected with Tom. But mine had an agreeable face, with thick dark brown hair. Her legs extended elegantly from a brief fuchsia frock. 

His intended, a blonde woman in an abbreviated black cocktail dress, had considerable make up and huge breasts. Gratifyingly, these were largely on display.

 She raised her glass to Tom.

He went across. "Allow us to introduce ourselves, I'm Tom, and this is Caspasian."

"Hi," said the woman in black, "I'm Lara."  The dark haired woman in pink smiled, "I'm Bruna. "

Lara said, "it's delightful to meet you, but unfortunately we're just leaving."

"My heart is sore," said Tom.

"Well, yes, but..." she indicated her cellphone as if it had some totemic meaning. 

"Another time, I hope," said Bruna, demurely.

In the Park

Some weeks passed and Tom and I were in the park...a summer's day, the sun generous. I carried things for a picnic in two bags. We had hired a little boat and were approaching the lake,  where it was tethered by a pier.

"Look" said Tom, "it's the two women from the party!" 

Indeed it was, albeit much more casually dressed if, amusingly, in the same colours: Lara in black shorts  and Bruna in a pink mini skirt.

Tom spoke, "Hello again, how nice to see you. We met at the party last weekend up in Highbury."

"Yes indeed. So sorry we had to run off," replied Lara.

 "We have a boat, why don't you come with us to the island?"

The island lay 30 meters across the water. There: great sycamores and weeping willows, a lawn and a neo-classical gazebo under which a table and three chairs welcomed voyagers.

The women looked at us and at each other. 

"Is it really worth visiting?" asked Lara.

"Anywhere is worth visiting in the right company," answered Tom, sagely.

"Especially so if you have a some chilled wine," I added, holding up the bag containing our bottles of Muscadet.

"I'm not sure," said Lara. "I have a boyfriend," she added unenthusiastically.

"So do I," said Bruna, even less eagerly.

"Well," said Tom, "you now have two."

"And, if that isn't enough,"  I said, holding up the carrier bag containing our food, "you are welcome to as much pie, cake, fruit and cheese as your hearts might desire."

Lara and Bruna exchanged a glance.  "Give us a moment," said Lara. They took their phones out, and turned briefly aside.

Tom and I went over to the boat, and sorted the oars and affected nonchalance. 

On the Island

Then we were on the island, lazing on a picnic blanket with the lunch treats placed in the centre. 

"So what do you gentlemen do, when you aren't hosting picnics?" asked Lara.

"Occasionally I work," said Tom, with an air of wounded dignity.

"And what about you?" said Bruna. "Well...yes I have such moments too," I responded vaguely.  A pause, then, "actually, I'm an engineer. For a big firm called V.E.M."

The girls looked at each other and then laughed uncontrollably, as if that were the funniest thing imaginable.

Tom freed the pie from its paper wrapping, revealing the magnificent bronze pastry structure we'd purchased from a butcher which was filled with almost every delicacy imaginable, including game, apricots and pieces of apple.

I was astonished by the eagerness with which the woman ate, quite like hungry wolves. Tom must have been thinking the same thing: he caught my eye and grinned. 

The party rolled along, the pie demolished, then the cheese. We sank the wine, then the women lay there and we proceeded to feed them slices of peach and mango, Lara produced a little spliff to share: happily doped, the women became amorous: Lara pushing herself close to Tom and ditto Bruna to me and so on and so forth - all very agreeable, to say the least.

Yes, the party certainly was something of a success. But the weather had shifted and we felt droplets of rain. We packed the debris and folded up the blanket and took to our boat.

Tom said, as he rowed us back to shore, "you know you girls are quite good company."

"I second that," I said, my arms round Bruna, who nestled close on the seat." She tipped her face up and we kissed.

The Return to Shore

"Oh God," said Lara, as we approached the little pier.

"What?" said Bruna. Then she looked over. "Oh fuck." 

There were two men waiting. 

"Oh dear" said Tom, looking round then rowing more slowly. "I don't like the look of them."

"Jesus," I added, as we approached. One was tall with a black t-shirt. The other was even  taller with an even blacker t-shirt bearing a jagged symbol. Both had huge beards.

 Tom, now rowing with considerable reluctance, groaned.

 "I didn't think they were coming?" said Bruna.

"Neither did I," said Lara, woefully.

The men grew even bigger as we drew closer. I could see tattoos on the taller man's inflated biceps, a skull and Gothic script. On the smaller man's hefty forearm was a massive dagger: blood dripped from the cruel blade.

 Tom rowed, very slowly. "Maybe we should go back to the island?" he whispered.

"Oh fuck," swore Lara as we drew nearer.

We hit the pier. I found the faces of the men familiar, but could not place them.

But nothing happened, except a sort of embarrassment which hovered above us all as the bearded muscle-men helped the women from the boat. Arms linked, they disappeared. 

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Illustration: Apple, acrylic on hardboard, 6.5 x 9 cm, c. 2000

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Read to Cyberscribes Albuquerque Creatives, 20 April, 2021

 and Online Critique Circle, 24 April, 2021 and Edinburgh Creative Writers Club 11 May, 2021

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A man with his head in an elephant's anus

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A Man with his Head in an Elephant's Anus

 

Tom and I were at a party, and had taken ourselves away from the throng to a drawing room. The room was not austere, the furniture was a dark wood with faint art nouveau touches, curlicues and floral forms. and there were books and a piano, and upright chairs and a table. 

A huge bunch of creamy lilies sang joyfully from a vase on the table.

Tom sat down. "Nice spot."

He had a bottle of white wine and two glasses.

"One for you, one for me, old boy." 

"Quieter here," I said, taking in the gilt framed  paintings, the huge Chinese rug, the ruby chaise longue.

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A man entered. He was wearing red trousers. Tom said, "hey, cunt." The man looked over, "that's not necessary." And left.

Then entered a girl in a blue dress, poised, with lovely rounded shoulders and startlingly large black eyes, dark straight hair, brown skin and a heart shaped crimson mouth.

Tom was interested. 

"Hi," he said, "fancy some wine?"

"Nah."

I looked at her and smiled.

She smiled back.

"He's gay," said Tom.

She raised her eyebrows in a sympathetic manner. "May I?" She took my glass and enjoyed a long sip, winked, then disappeared.

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Another person came in. He was completely bald and wearing dungarees. 

 'Do you shave your head so you can stick it in an elephant's anus?" asked Tom. 

"Yeah? So what's it to you if that's what I like...?" And off he went.

"Tom, for God's sake." 

"Oh Christ." Tom gulped his wine. "Do you really think he puts his head in elephants' anuses?"

"It's not likely, when you think about it. It might even be illegal. Anyway, it shut you up. You're going to start a fight if you carry on like that. "

"For some reason he was wearing  dungarees," said Tom.

I'd had enough of Tom. I was worried that he would really offend someone and there'd be a fight. So I went into the hall: there people stood about aimlessly. Or maybe they wanted to use the toilet.

The bald man in dungarees appeared with a bottle in his hand. He stood in the middle of the hall, slugging from the bottle. 

"What are you looking at? What?"

The blue dress girl was there and she came over and gave my hand a squeeze. We talked a little.  Then we decided to leave.

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In the lamplit street...

"By the way, I'm May."

We shook hands rather formally. "I'm Caspasian."

"What was it about that bald guy? So angry," asked May.

"I don't know, was there maybe something my friend said? Some find him a little blunt."

"I don't know," said May. "He was very cross. And for some reason he was wearing dungarees."

 May took me to her apartment and we sat in the kitchen, drinking  coffee from tiny porcelain cups. Then she disappeared to the bathroom.  I sent a Whatsapp message to Tom.

-I'm at her place.

-Fuck off, replied Tom.

-We're in the BEDROOM.

-Fuck you.

-She's taking off her dress.

No reply

Then May reappeared  in a negligee.

*

I decided not to see Tom for a while. His behaviour had become more and more difficult, and I reflected that it was even beginning to limit social possibilities in what was, for me, still a new city. 

I did, however, see May. 

 Spring had come, the city awoke with flinty sunlight, and May, longer a resident, took me on walks in the neighbourhood. 

We visited a prominent local museum, famous for its gigantic collection of shrunken aboriginal heads. 

"I hope your family don't indulge in this practice?" I asked, as we perused the tiny shrivelled faces.

"Not always, only my stupidest exes are here."

We enjoyed chocolate cake in a famous coffee house, which Freud had frequented. We strolled, hand in hand,  through the flower market then admired over-priced antiques in a Victorian shopping gallery.

One charming sunny afternoon we went slightly further up the hill, to discover a municipal park. From the entrance gates cherry trees, in full pink regalia lined the path and down it we traipsed like Japanese lovers, and it led to a large circle of grass in which could be seen trucks of all sizes, and men and women standing around, some opening crates, others supervising, smoking, or talking. 

"The circus is in town!" exclaimed May.

 

And from the side of one truck I read, "Barnley's Greatest Circus Extravaganza."

We watched. A perimeter fence had already been constructed and animals appeared from the trucks: minuscule piebald horses, four merry poodles, then a pair of lions, doped like Californians, sloped dreamily down a ramp, and finally an Indian elephant came, accompanied by two handlers and a man in dungarees.

"I think it's the bald angry guy from the party," said May.

"It is indeed, and he's wearing the same dungarees."

"Hi!" yelled May.

"Hi!"  I shouted.

The dungareed man looked over and gave a thumbs up. 

The handlers steered the elephant  by means of a chain around its ankle and considerable yelling and smacking to an area further from the trucks.

A handler held a large tin open to the dungareed man. He removed some matter from the tin with his hands and proceeded to smear it on his pate.

A set of wooden steps, painted in circus colours, was placed near the rear of the elephant,  and the dungareed man ascended. One of the handlers pulled aside the elephants tail, and the dungareed man, after a brief pause to collect himself, inserted his head forcefully into the anus of the animal: after a moment of apparent indifference the elephant raised its trunk to sound the first bars of the national anthem.

May squeezed my hand, and, pressing together, we kissed, deliriously.

Presently, the man removed his head and, still on the steps, raised his arms in a v-gesture of triumph.

May and I cheered loudly. "Bravo!"  

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Illustration: acrylic on hardboard, 6.5 x 8.7 cm, c. 2000

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Read to: The Cornwall Writers' Circle, to Metro Detroit Writers' Group, 14 April, 2021, to Edinburgh Creative Writer's Club, 20 April, 2021 and Astoria Writers 2 May, 2021

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An apple on a wall, Canasvieiras

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An apple on a wall, Canasvieiras

This was seen a a street down from here. 

What does it mean? 

It's unlikely that the apple is there for target practice as guns aren't common here and, anyway, if you were to shoot from any direction you'd surely hit a building or a window or something.

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The soles of my shoes

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Gymshoes

The Soles of my Shoes

You and me have seen everything to see

From Bangkok to Calgary

And the soles of our shoes are all worn down

The time to sleep is now*

These plimsols were bought in Arequipa, Peru, two years ago. 

I needed some shoes because my boots had gotten completely sodden in the mountains, and would need some days to dry properly.

Shopping in Peru has a specific aspect, in that instead of a variety of shops in a neighbourhood shops of the same type will dominate totally a particular street, or even a network of streets. So, in Arequipa there are streets which contain only shoe shops and  there are dozens of them while other streets consist entirely of ranks of oculists or stationers, and so forth. Obviously this is helpful if you have only one type of purchase to make, because then you can compare many different shops. But if you have a range of things you won't find them in one neighborhood- you`ll have to cross the entire city because each type of shop bunches up with its fellows.

This particular street truly had a huge collection of shoe shops, so many, indeed, that it was quite impossible to imagine how any could possibly turn a profit, especially as the stock sold seemed identical in each, and each store was as much of a jumble as the last. 

I selected, randomly, one shop- a salesgirl, wearing an expression of extreme boredom, found it possible to rise from her stool and locate my size in the chaos of the store. I tried them on and  have found them to be very satisfactory, despite their not having arch support.

I like very much the way it says "Aster", which means "star" in Greek, and I like how the tread has that geometric design like so many Union Jacks within circles. I guess these shoes are a homage to British sport, probably badminton or tennis in the 20s, and there is a definite  air of innocence about them.

I suppose looking at these shoes has a melancholy aspect related to time passing and things wearing down, the sole's condition being a measure of passage. However, despite a couple of years use they have worn down very little, though the uppers are now faded.

I often felt, when travelling, that I was traipsing, a vagabond. I went to paint pictures. I took paints and carriers and brushes and easels. I often went to Peru but also to the USA and North Africa. About 20% the paintings were good. That means of course that many were poor. Failure is essential to success in art as in sport, but it's dispiriting nonetheless. 

And often the experience was quite isolating. By your fifties you are going to be quite alone in these experiences. You have to be secure in yourself because the market in paintings is minuscule and there really isn't that much interest in what artists are doing, though I've exhibited and sold enough to at least pay for trips and paints.  Nowadays you are never far from a friend online, but it is still good to have a book, preferably nothing too heavy to lose yourself in. The Engish language bookstores in non-English speaking countries often have quite odd selections of books available and it`s fun to read authors that I`d otherwise pass by - Victorians or popular crime fiction, say. 

 I stayed in Chile for a month in January 2021, in a magical place of volcanos and lakes, immense virgin forests, and then troubled cities where every historic building, every public sculpture, every shop front, pavement, street sign, or flower bed had been vandalised in the name of human rights, covered with posters or spray painted slogans and the universal cliches of agitprop. I started to feel myself sinking.    

I felt that alienation in a few places: Bolivia too, and less visited parts of Peru. But I never felt it in New York maybe because of the hubbub and how the Met offers a spiritual refuge especially if you like 19th century art, and the people about you are such that they understand and accept people as individual, and self constructed.

Truly, behind the goal of painting landscapes,  I was in search of something  to lend life a goal when I wasn't sure it had any. When you travel in a certain backpacker-bum style you can sit in a broken  hostel room here or there and think why am I here because you are trying to exist outside the context needed for your life to have meaning. This might be romantic and interesting but it is also quite disturbing, and unless you have mental disciplines, to deal with this you will suffer. You must eschew alcohol and maintain a timetable and not slob around in your mind or in the place you find yourself.

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I'll say that the pandemic forced me,  by grounding me, to settle. Unconscious forces acted on me and I found myself one afternoon tidying things away, boxing them and throwing out stuff and an invisible hand directed me to start looking for and eventually buy property too, and move there, in the process discarding two tables, a fridge, a cupboard and piles of old or unwanted clothing.

 Men came to the new apartment  to replace skirting boards, mosquito screens and taps. I commissioned a huge worktable from an obese Argentinian carpenter and arranged my books and got a kettle which lights up blue when it's heating water.  Then came pans and even, for my first time ever, a television, one with a giant screen. I bought and cultivated house plants. I bought floor carpets, new pillows, a standard lamp, a table lamp and re-upholstered chairs and sofas. I bought two carved wooden bowls. I bought t-shirts, shirts, socks, shorts, towels, soaps, shampoos, razors. I bought fish in tins and cucumbers in jars and dried beans in white and red and black and canned peaches

I bought a new computer and thought about another computer. I looked at the cracked screen of my cel and thought of replacing it too.

Often this process has been enjoyable, though with furniture there is a lack of variety in styles available.  Almost everything here in Florianopolis is fairly new,  and the second hand market is just junky kitchen units and corpulent sofafas made of shiny vinyl, like those in pornographic films. The new stuff sold here can be ok, a sort of twentieth century modern,  roughly Scandinavian in mental set: not a style that I find easy to love passionately, as it`s just a bit bland. But it's not bad as a base. I do think the stuff I really like is not suited to modern apartments, being too delicate somehow: I like Danish or English neo-classical.

This process is already winding down, though I might paint a big wall not because it needs it but because it might somehow mean that I have occupied it and it would become more mine. I might paint it green.

I wonder what I might do when this phase of home-creation ends, when the pandemic ends and the world re-awakens, and if with it I'll be launched again into the necessity of travel.

The travelling phase was a response to the emptiness I felt hanging about, the extraordinary boringness of ordinary settled life,  which I've felt since I was about ten years of age. That detestable lack of romance in daily life, undoubtedly a sensation exacerbated by close friendships with Tintin and Biggles and some idea of adventurousness that floated in the Scottish air (I'm not sure if it is still felt?). And how settlement seemed, at least where I grew up in suburban Aberdeen, to necessitate abnegation and a superhuman tolerance for tedium.

The sense of asphyxiation that seems so integral to the settlement process will most likely drive me back to make some trips, however alienating they might be.

 All that was written two years ago- and now I`m off in a few weeks to Colombia, then Ecuador and if I can take this laptop and teach a bit along the way, and if I successfully sublet my place, perhaps can sustain economically a few months on the road

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Lyrics from "I will follow you into the dark", by Death Cab for Cutie

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Thanks to Astoria Writers' Group for feedback, 18 April, 2021 and Walton Writers 6 May, 2021

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My sleep

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Boats, unknown artist, bought on West End Lane 25 years ago

My Sleep

I wanted to write about my sleep, about what might be going on there, because I haven't had a dream for a long time, not for years, and I guess that might be interpreted as the death or the dying of my unconscious mind. Perhaps, you might argue, I've evolved into this super-conscient being, whose mental workings have no mystery. But the decisions I daily make or fail to make suggest you would be wrong.

I also wanted to tell you about my bed, and then I started to think about how it would be to see a photograph of myself sleeping and how creepy that would be. To see myself lying asleep would be to see myself vulnerable to attack, my body unwilled, corpse-like, down there. Part of what makes that thought disturbing is, I confess, that it has a whispering allure, as at times I do indeed wish I could rise from my body and see myself my own form, dead, spent through.

That isn't a constant desire, but can rise when life is wretched. I suppose such trains of thought should be controlled as they might lead to rather unconstructive attitudes to life's travails.

One thing about sleep is that although it's a physical necessity, you can't force it: it has to come voluntarily.  It's as if there are are two of you. There is one that declares it's bed time. This one has to make it as easy for the other part of you, a younger, occasionally rebellious part, to concede to sleep. Sometimes the younger part gives up easily. But if they aren't cooperative you can't force them.

You lie, probably a sprung or foam mattress covered by a sheet of cotton, with one or two further items of raised padding, called pillows, to support your head. Then, there is a blanket or duvet. And there you are passive within cloth with, ideally, only your head or one arm protruding from that envelopment.

You're in there, your head pressing  into the pillow, then you close your eyes and try to ease your mind, letting any conflictuous moments from the day fade, and you push away any hopes or aspirations so you are humble, desire free, and your passage into sleep can proceed without rupture. 

If you start thinking about girls in black stockings and negligees or some other sex thing then it is better if it is a memory of a successful encounter than an ambition. The memory can reassure that the world is benign, but the ambition will excite and render sleep impossible as you lie, hopeless, speculating about how you might contrive an apparently chance meeting outside a supermarket and where that encounter might lead. 

But if that process, that embarkation, is overlong and you're hanging around for ages it is sensible to give up, to return to the state of will and rise from the bed. You can iron shirts or arrange your postage stamp collection, perform some quiet, monotonous but ultimately purposeful task. 

Myself, I have arranged all my bookshelves according to colour of the spines. There is something especially pleasing about the row of black books. 

The sleep I want is dense,  rapid asphyxiation.  I want to be taken into a landscape by Poussin. I want serpentine paths weaving through forests of giant beeches and a lazy fisherman sleeping by a brook.  I want distant mountains and grand stillness broken only by the wisps of smoke from a dying campfire. I want dark red brown shadows and chrome green and flashes of scarlet toga and cerulean blue sky and cartoon clouds and the occasional satyr, playing a woody melody.

 I want lostness, dreamland, a place without or decision or shame.

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Read to the Albuquerque Creatives, 5 April, 2021 and Metro Detroit Writing Workshop, 7 April, 2021

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