Green 1
It’s a blue mist day. Maybe the last day of summer.
The last day of the summer holiday.
Best friends long gone.
Children and grandchildren withdrawn.
Dinghy deflated.
Cot put away for the last time.
Easy to be uncertain about next year for any number of reasons.
It’s a blue mist day and I can’t show you.
I can’t record it.
There’s this pale imitation:
The last day of the summer holiday.
Best friends long gone.
Children and grandchildren withdrawn.
Dinghy deflated.
Cot put away for the last time.
Easy to be uncertain about next year for any number of reasons.
It’s a blue mist day and I can’t show you.
I can’t record it.
There’s this pale imitation:
That is Everest in the mist, in a ghostly blue mist, but emerging from it.
The blue is vivid. Livid. And a veil hangs over it.
Actually, the veil doesn’t hang; it creeps down from the top of Everest...
engulfing the world
as acid eats a photographic plate or flame or glacier or lava devours all before it.
Unexpectedly on this hothot day, the sun loses.
The mountain is subsumed.
Sometimes it seems that nature is stronger than itself.
Well... always.
Mist swallows sun.
Sun dries puddle.
Rain muds dust.
Wind fells tree.
Tree splits rock.
But I am here with green. Not blue.
I have done blue previously.
Done it to death really.
The blue is vivid. Livid. And a veil hangs over it.
Actually, the veil doesn’t hang; it creeps down from the top of Everest...
engulfing the world
as acid eats a photographic plate or flame or glacier or lava devours all before it.
Unexpectedly on this hothot day, the sun loses.
The mountain is subsumed.
Sometimes it seems that nature is stronger than itself.
Well... always.
Mist swallows sun.
Sun dries puddle.
Rain muds dust.
Wind fells tree.
Tree splits rock.
But I am here with green. Not blue.
I have done blue previously.
Done it to death really.
Green 2
I am here with green but earlier a veil hung over me.
This being a day for distraction, I shall distract you with veil.
[I am becoming more aware that somebody other than me may read this. So, when I say ‘you’, I now mean you, not one of my throng of internal four-year-olds or my inner vicar or the clown or any of the others.]
The veil was somehow significant. It relates to the masks that have started to appear. A veil is not a mask, but it does mask. It can subsume a face, as a mist can subsume a mountain. It can suggest an astronaut. It can dissolve into a blue mist. It can suggest a world where things are somehow not quite right. Not as they should be.
This being a day for distraction, I shall distract you with veil.
[I am becoming more aware that somebody other than me may read this. So, when I say ‘you’, I now mean you, not one of my throng of internal four-year-olds or my inner vicar or the clown or any of the others.]
The veil was somehow significant. It relates to the masks that have started to appear. A veil is not a mask, but it does mask. It can subsume a face, as a mist can subsume a mountain. It can suggest an astronaut. It can dissolve into a blue mist. It can suggest a world where things are somehow not quite right. Not as they should be.
Green 3
But I am here with green.
Is there an acid green?
I have brought this cloth. It seems like acid green to me. I expect it to jar with everything in the garden... to be an outrage.
But it’s not so bad.
Is there an acid green?
I have brought this cloth. It seems like acid green to me. I expect it to jar with everything in the garden... to be an outrage.
But it’s not so bad.
And I am unexpectedly delighted when it starts to billow out of opening.
In no time I am wondering whether it’s barging rather than billowing
And from there I get the sudden idea of Boris Johnson’s bum.
I can play with that.
See how, in the second photo below, I have tried to fashion buttocks with an anal crease...
In no time I am wondering whether it’s barging rather than billowing
And from there I get the sudden idea of Boris Johnson’s bum.
I can play with that.
See how, in the second photo below, I have tried to fashion buttocks with an anal crease...
Well I did.
I tried to make a perfect representation of a fat, acid-green bottom
with a livid bum crack
disappearing
into a hole in a tree.
But it didn’t work... doesn’t work. Mary has just sent me a brainpicking which says:
making art is about following what’s luminous to you and putting it in a jar, to share with others.
The cloth felt luminous, the idea of Boris’s bum sizzled to the surface of my mud.mind, I popped it in a jar...
and it didn’t work.
I can tell before I take the picture, before I prelook at it, before I look at it, before I sigh a little.
I am distracted by a cyclamen.
Perhaps distraction is my defence (or one of them) against my own disappointment with my own uselessness.
With my artlessness.
Here is its underneath - five stubby.petals connected into a cup that I never see.
(I didn’t see it when I took the picture because I couldn’t fit my head between the stubby.petalled cup and the ground.)
Blow me.
It’s a slight opening.
Concealing yellow.
Like finding butter in a turban.
Or traces of custard in a damson that’s been brought in a sealed container from Mars.
I tried to make a perfect representation of a fat, acid-green bottom
with a livid bum crack
disappearing
into a hole in a tree.
But it didn’t work... doesn’t work. Mary has just sent me a brainpicking which says:
making art is about following what’s luminous to you and putting it in a jar, to share with others.
The cloth felt luminous, the idea of Boris’s bum sizzled to the surface of my mud.mind, I popped it in a jar...
and it didn’t work.
I can tell before I take the picture, before I prelook at it, before I look at it, before I sigh a little.
I am distracted by a cyclamen.
Perhaps distraction is my defence (or one of them) against my own disappointment with my own uselessness.
With my artlessness.
Here is its underneath - five stubby.petals connected into a cup that I never see.
(I didn’t see it when I took the picture because I couldn’t fit my head between the stubby.petalled cup and the ground.)
Blow me.
It’s a slight opening.
Concealing yellow.
Like finding butter in a turban.
Or traces of custard in a damson that’s been brought in a sealed container from Mars.
I have stolen this next image (right) of a cyclamen from YouGrowGirl because it shows the stubby.petalled cup better than my picture does.
The thing is that I sometimes feel the same way about flowers as I do about the hole that Małgorzata Dawidek is putting her hand in in Opening. I get overwhelmed by their vulnerability. I wince when a fat bee elbows her way in. I wince a lot for flowers. Then I pick them or trample on them or push them into mud-filled stones for art. I am sensitive when it suits me. |
So look what I did. I found a beautiful, bulbous.throated black-eyed susan and then I found a a smooth stick with a rough tip and I shoved it into the flower.
If I found a four-year-old child doing that, I’d be furious. Incandescent.
And yet I seem to be uniquely well-placed to understand such behaviour.
If I found a four-year-old child doing that, I’d be furious. Incandescent.
And yet I seem to be uniquely well-placed to understand such behaviour.
Green 4
Cyclamen’s slight opening is a slight promising.
Given the inner custard, I don’t think cyclamen overpromises.
I have the sudden idea that if I could curl back my five lips and offer my interlocutor (you, say) a glimpse of custard, then I wouldn’t need to bother trying to be interesting to people.
Even the possession of five lips might help me go viral.
Is a vortex an opening? It seems to be, but one that suggests imminent closure.
Given the inner custard, I don’t think cyclamen overpromises.
I have the sudden idea that if I could curl back my five lips and offer my interlocutor (you, say) a glimpse of custard, then I wouldn’t need to bother trying to be interesting to people.
Even the possession of five lips might help me go viral.
Is a vortex an opening? It seems to be, but one that suggests imminent closure.
Green 5
Taking pictures of nature's slight openings is hardly art.
Green 6
It’s worth noting that the tree I am forcing Boris through is dead.
Does that mean that I can make it mine more?
If I snap twigs off it, reshape it,
Does it become more art, less nature?
I cannot really own or practise art on a living tree, but I can do what I like with a dead one and probably copyright it.
How I detest copyright.
Unless the person breaching copyright is himself detestable, in which case I wholeheartedly support the rights of the artist to pick the sweet fruits of her hard labour.
But I am not like this any more. I am no longer mean and spiteful and full of detesting people and things. Surely I am a lovely old man. Generous and welcoming. I have closed down all the slight openings which might allow people to see that my inner custard is bile. Custard bile.
Does that mean that I can make it mine more?
If I snap twigs off it, reshape it,
Does it become more art, less nature?
I cannot really own or practise art on a living tree, but I can do what I like with a dead one and probably copyright it.
How I detest copyright.
Unless the person breaching copyright is himself detestable, in which case I wholeheartedly support the rights of the artist to pick the sweet fruits of her hard labour.
But I am not like this any more. I am no longer mean and spiteful and full of detesting people and things. Surely I am a lovely old man. Generous and welcoming. I have closed down all the slight openings which might allow people to see that my inner custard is bile. Custard bile.
Green 7
Where the creeper and the rose and the honeysuckle have collectively fallen off the wall, leaving it shorn, I want to drape it.
I want the rough wall to be smoothly draped...
in acid green.
I want the red tendrils of vine to overlay the smooth drape to suggest that the cloth has been there for weeks.
I want the rough wall to be smoothly draped...
in acid green.
I want the red tendrils of vine to overlay the smooth drape to suggest that the cloth has been there for weeks.
There. I’ve done it.
But it's nothing.
To get it properly smooth, I would need to get a ladder, go outside, climb up the other side of the wall, fasten weights to the cloth to stretch it smooth.taut and stop it flapping.
I can’t be arsed. Can’t be Boris.Johnson.arsed.
I’m not that committed to my art.
Well, I’d do it if I thought it would be really, really good.
Can you just imagine it smooth, instead?
But it's nothing.
To get it properly smooth, I would need to get a ladder, go outside, climb up the other side of the wall, fasten weights to the cloth to stretch it smooth.taut and stop it flapping.
I can’t be arsed. Can’t be Boris.Johnson.arsed.
I’m not that committed to my art.
Well, I’d do it if I thought it would be really, really good.
Can you just imagine it smooth, instead?
Green 8
I need a climax though. A punch line. A pay-off. A money shot. Something to satisfy.
But I’m looking for distraction.
I am a dull glaze waiting for a YouTube video to clickbait me.
Nature’s clickbaits are subtler.
A magpie rattles.
Grass shivers.
An ant bites me.
That peregrine flying waist-high past me in the field.
Nature’s insistence is actually not so subtle.
Perhaps loss is subtler.
The absence of swallows.
The non-appearance of painted ladies.
Oh here you go again.
I want to try the other greens. And...
Balance.
Balance, of course. To keep me on course.
The balance.idea comes from nowhere.
A saving grace? A habit? A profound insight? A relief?
I can balance broom handles like I do in the hall.
It will postpone reaching a climax with the green.
Kevin can’t knock them over.
But I’m looking for distraction.
I am a dull glaze waiting for a YouTube video to clickbait me.
Nature’s clickbaits are subtler.
A magpie rattles.
Grass shivers.
An ant bites me.
That peregrine flying waist-high past me in the field.
Nature’s insistence is actually not so subtle.
Perhaps loss is subtler.
The absence of swallows.
The non-appearance of painted ladies.
Oh here you go again.
I want to try the other greens. And...
Balance.
Balance, of course. To keep me on course.
The balance.idea comes from nowhere.
A saving grace? A habit? A profound insight? A relief?
I can balance broom handles like I do in the hall.
It will postpone reaching a climax with the green.
Kevin can’t knock them over.
I see no merit whatsoever in the doing of it, in the recording of it or in the re-presentation of it here.
My green project is a kind of falling away into the banal. I should have stopped weeks ago.
While I was still trembling.
I can drape this darker cloth...
My green project is a kind of falling away into the banal. I should have stopped weeks ago.
While I was still trembling.
I can drape this darker cloth...
Nothing. Whatever I did before has gone. A fluke.
Like the time I scored a goal with my left foot by mistake and Mr Gamble thought I might be good but then I was put back in charge of handing out orange segments at half-time because I wasn’t any good after all.
And I was made scorer at cricket because I wasn’t any good at that either.
And I used to kneel down in the mud to pretend to tie up my rugby bootlaces so it would later look as if I had got muddy tackling someone.
And my orienteering team had to be collected by car because I was so bad at map-reading.
And I had to be prompter in The Pirates of Penzance because I couldn’t sing.
Stop it now. Just stop it. It’s unbearable. Whining on. Belly-aching on. SHUT UP. Bastard.
Like the time I scored a goal with my left foot by mistake and Mr Gamble thought I might be good but then I was put back in charge of handing out orange segments at half-time because I wasn’t any good after all.
And I was made scorer at cricket because I wasn’t any good at that either.
And I used to kneel down in the mud to pretend to tie up my rugby bootlaces so it would later look as if I had got muddy tackling someone.
And my orienteering team had to be collected by car because I was so bad at map-reading.
And I had to be prompter in The Pirates of Penzance because I couldn’t sing.
Stop it now. Just stop it. It’s unbearable. Whining on. Belly-aching on. SHUT UP. Bastard.
Green 9
Let me just try with this homunculus, this gnarled, sea-smoothed stick.
It reminds me of my father with arthritis.
It speaks to me of contortion.
I like its pale, polished wood.
I don’t think I can make anything of it.
It reminds me of my father with arthritis.
It speaks to me of contortion.
I like its pale, polished wood.
I don’t think I can make anything of it.
Maybe against green?
Not really.
Nice. But not really anything.
Not really.
Nice. But not really anything.
Maybe touching, balancing on this other stick?
Some quietly composed contact?
Not really.
It’s mediocre.
Which is OK.
Some quietly composed contact?
Not really.
It’s mediocre.
Which is OK.
Maybe one last go? To pull something out of the hat. A rabbit?
Ready?
The big one saved for the end?
Combining green and blue and balance and a slight opening?
Nah. Not really.
A foreshortened, naked, laughing dancing man,
legs splayed,
one foot supported by a stick, the other supported by god,
tongue out lasciviously,
cocks everywhere.
An old man dancing the dust.path to death, on a blue mist day -- the last day of summer.
Something and nothing.
Ready?
The big one saved for the end?
Combining green and blue and balance and a slight opening?
Nah. Not really.
A foreshortened, naked, laughing dancing man,
legs splayed,
one foot supported by a stick, the other supported by god,
tongue out lasciviously,
cocks everywhere.
An old man dancing the dust.path to death, on a blue mist day -- the last day of summer.
Something and nothing.