Marc Nash's Blog, page 35
September 24, 2014
Compulsory Consumer Choices Ceaseless Even Unto Death - Friday Flash
He hadn’t been shopping in a store like this for years. The last time must have been when he and his wife bought a king-sized double bed. As newly-weds they had ensured to try every mattress available, lying down and making out on each one. All in the name of test driving the springs. When his bride to be donned that Learner plate for her Hen night, she had already been thoroughly road tested. But their bed was one-sided now. He got lost in its voluminosity. The only place in this satellite system world where it was still possible to become lost. That is until they invented a GPS of the emotions. They probably already had, but presumably there wasn’t much call for it in this hurly-burly world. People were perpetually on the move and had no time to ascertain how others were disposed.
She must have undertaken her own version of this shopping trip without him knowing. When it was still voluntary perhaps. She had opted for being dumped at sea and becoming fish food. A second mode of human transport sending her into the beyond after she had died in a multiple pile up on the motorway the size of a back alley. However the immersion in a flotation tank which he had just undertaken, had only made him throw up. He had never been terribly comfortable in water. And with this experience, he had certainly not fulfilled the brochure’s promise of losing all sense of his bodily boundaries and just gently flowing with the pacific swell. Nor had they introduced any fish to pluck at his flesh. But then the brochures never advertise that do they?
So he wasn’t likely to be buried alongside his beloved. Even though a GPS could probably muster the location of her remains. These days humans were tagged like biological specimens in the wild. Now that they had no actual creatures left to tail after reclaiming their habitats for tarmac, leaving a mountain of tracking tags going spare. It wasn’t clear to him if the push for cars led to the upsurge in GPS devices, or the other way around. He was tagged of course, under the shoulder. But there would be no one interested in picking up his path now.
The heft of this actually felt okay. None too weighty. He couldn’t sense the touch of the wood against any part of him. He hadn’t expected that. Maybe the wood was coated with some mild neural numbing agent. A bit of a cheat to encourage sales. Somehow he was possessed of the perception of a ton of earth on top of him, but he wasn’t experiencing it pressing down on him directly. The wood must be bearing the brunt. He could smell it though. Redolent in his nostrils, clammy, like potato skins. But he knew that he must have that inverted, tubers smell that way because they spend their whole growth in the earth. What did any of this matter anyway? He was only afforded his senses because this was a dry run.
Since he wouldn’t be able to feel the sides of the coffin’s wood when he was gone. Soil would possess no smell for his corpse to inhale. He wouldn’t be imagining he could feel the weight of anything by that point. And the contrivance of an ambient temperature, controlled by the store for the recumbent comfort of customers, would be irrelevant whether it was purchased for eternity, or not an add-on feature purchased for greater outlay. Besides, everyone knew this was a con trick. There were no cemeteries any longer. Devoured like the rest of the land beneath the ever hungry demand for roads. The human delusion of rushing around somehow forestalling the abrupt cessation brought by death. A coffin purchase could only entail a cremation, though he wondered how the authorities advised their authorised death service dealers to allow the customer to sample an incineration.
He reckoned that the ever more frequent motorway pile-ups, which had led the government to demand pre-planning with regards to body disposal, were also prompted by the car manufacturers. After all, the GPS devices should have been able to forestall most of the crashes shouldn’t they? But he couldn’t figure out how if the numbers of drivers were reduce by crash culls, how that could enable them to sell more vehicles. But what good did any of this speculation do him? He’d had the same car for a couple of decades now, so he was not a target customer dead or alive. He’d taken his wife’s wreck to a chop shop where they’d merged it with another chassis. Just so he could stay close to her. Inhale her dying breath every single day.
Next on the menu was an air funeral. He had always liked buzzards and vultures at the zoo. Maybe there might be some spiritual communion to be had here. At least they wouldn’t try and hide the incontestable fact of your flesh being devoured by creatures with this one. He was shown into a gallery with a glass screen as a carcass of some poor animal was wheeled into the room beyond the glass. All he could see was his wife’s broken body there on the trolley. He was sick again.
She must have undertaken her own version of this shopping trip without him knowing. When it was still voluntary perhaps. She had opted for being dumped at sea and becoming fish food. A second mode of human transport sending her into the beyond after she had died in a multiple pile up on the motorway the size of a back alley. However the immersion in a flotation tank which he had just undertaken, had only made him throw up. He had never been terribly comfortable in water. And with this experience, he had certainly not fulfilled the brochure’s promise of losing all sense of his bodily boundaries and just gently flowing with the pacific swell. Nor had they introduced any fish to pluck at his flesh. But then the brochures never advertise that do they?
So he wasn’t likely to be buried alongside his beloved. Even though a GPS could probably muster the location of her remains. These days humans were tagged like biological specimens in the wild. Now that they had no actual creatures left to tail after reclaiming their habitats for tarmac, leaving a mountain of tracking tags going spare. It wasn’t clear to him if the push for cars led to the upsurge in GPS devices, or the other way around. He was tagged of course, under the shoulder. But there would be no one interested in picking up his path now.
The heft of this actually felt okay. None too weighty. He couldn’t sense the touch of the wood against any part of him. He hadn’t expected that. Maybe the wood was coated with some mild neural numbing agent. A bit of a cheat to encourage sales. Somehow he was possessed of the perception of a ton of earth on top of him, but he wasn’t experiencing it pressing down on him directly. The wood must be bearing the brunt. He could smell it though. Redolent in his nostrils, clammy, like potato skins. But he knew that he must have that inverted, tubers smell that way because they spend their whole growth in the earth. What did any of this matter anyway? He was only afforded his senses because this was a dry run.
Since he wouldn’t be able to feel the sides of the coffin’s wood when he was gone. Soil would possess no smell for his corpse to inhale. He wouldn’t be imagining he could feel the weight of anything by that point. And the contrivance of an ambient temperature, controlled by the store for the recumbent comfort of customers, would be irrelevant whether it was purchased for eternity, or not an add-on feature purchased for greater outlay. Besides, everyone knew this was a con trick. There were no cemeteries any longer. Devoured like the rest of the land beneath the ever hungry demand for roads. The human delusion of rushing around somehow forestalling the abrupt cessation brought by death. A coffin purchase could only entail a cremation, though he wondered how the authorities advised their authorised death service dealers to allow the customer to sample an incineration.
He reckoned that the ever more frequent motorway pile-ups, which had led the government to demand pre-planning with regards to body disposal, were also prompted by the car manufacturers. After all, the GPS devices should have been able to forestall most of the crashes shouldn’t they? But he couldn’t figure out how if the numbers of drivers were reduce by crash culls, how that could enable them to sell more vehicles. But what good did any of this speculation do him? He’d had the same car for a couple of decades now, so he was not a target customer dead or alive. He’d taken his wife’s wreck to a chop shop where they’d merged it with another chassis. Just so he could stay close to her. Inhale her dying breath every single day.
Next on the menu was an air funeral. He had always liked buzzards and vultures at the zoo. Maybe there might be some spiritual communion to be had here. At least they wouldn’t try and hide the incontestable fact of your flesh being devoured by creatures with this one. He was shown into a gallery with a glass screen as a carcass of some poor animal was wheeled into the room beyond the glass. All he could see was his wife’s broken body there on the trolley. He was sick again.
September 17, 2014
Vanilla - Friday Flash
*Content warning* Allusions to sex and violence
“I demand to see my personnel file”
“The Agency is sorry for your loss. If there’s anything you need to help with the funeral arrangements, you have all our resources at your disposal- ow!”
“I w-a-n-t to read my file”
“Well you can put in a request in writing to access it-“
“Take this gun at your forehead is my request. Six bullets in the chamber, that’s double triplicate”
“Real tough guy pistol whipping someone sat on a chair”
“That barely scratches the surface of what you’ve had me do in the past”
“Course the psych report did highlight certain ego issues. But not the id. That was all in order I’m glad to report”
“Just give me the goddamned file”
“The missions are in another file-“
“I’m not interested in the mission stuff”
“But if someone tried to kill you, you’ll need to look back over the missions to work out who”
“I know who tried to kill me. It was you fuckers”
“Don’t flatter yourself”
“How do I know it was you? I saw the timer and the device rigged up. It’s all Agency kit”
“On the job even when on the job eh? Ow! One of our enemies could frame us, make it look like we put the hit on you. I mean a beheading for goodness sakes. I know it's all the rage, but just not our style"
“I k-n-o-w it was you, because you screwed it up. Big time”
“…Well?”
“Well what?”
“You’re waiting for me to say it”
“Say what?”
“That we screwed it up because we couldn’t put our best agent on it”
“Nice double bind play. Prove I really did have ego issues if I agree with you”
“Found what you’re looking for yet?”
“I never screwed up a single mission. So you can’t be icing me for that. Never disobeyed a directive, never gave you any trouble. It’s not about any money…”
“It’s always about you isn’t it? - Ow!”
“No, it’s about my wife who is lying on my bed in two pieces, fully bled out”
“Yes no more receiving head from her I’m afraid”
“You motherfucker! I’ll rip your head off your shoulders, see how you smile on the other side of your face across the room then”
“Ow, ow ow!”
“Fuck, there’s nothing in the file”
“Oh there’s everything in the file. Pass it me, let’s see if there are any clues there? Sexual orientation… Hetero”
“I was married for fourteen years. Longer than working for this backstabbing outfit”
“She wasn’t stabbed in the back- Ow! Stop hitting me”
“Stop playing games then. You know why this has happened. The directive would have come through your hands at some point, if you didn’t issue it yourself that is”
“I keep returning to the sexual orientation. You ever play away from home?”
“No. I loved her too much”
“Not even any honey trap missions? I’ll need that other file…”
“No. I never had any of those. You better not be playing for time here. Someone comes through that door and I plug you first”
“I’m simply trying to help you get some closure here. I’m telling you, it’s all about the sexual orientation”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You may not have done honey traps, but you’ve done enough surveillance work where you’ve recorded the mark making the beast with two backs before you lay him out on his back for good”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well we, um know the sexual predilections of all our agents as a matter of course”
“You snap us having sex?”
“Well it makes for good currency, or at least it did anyways before people started making their own porn and posting it online”
“You sick fucker. I bet you watched it in your downtime right? Made you all hot and hard did it?”
“Not really. And that’s kind of the point. In your case we didn’t have to update it. Ever. Like clockwork you two. Same night of the week. Exactly the same time at night. Same place within the house, the marital bed…”
“What’s wrong with that? We had a very loving marriage”
“If you away on assignment I bet you could just as effectively phone it in- Ow!”
“You’d know if I did, since you’re sure to have bugged my phone”
“It’s all just a bit… vanilla isn’t it? Ow! Well, tonight was the designated night of your termination from the Agency-“
“Why?”
“We felt you were, well, just too set in your ways. Not able to respond to our changing times. Gone stale”
“What, based on my sex life?”
“Of course not. But that was the exclamation mark on our analysis. Anyway, for years and years we’d seen you and your wife gently doggy. I ‘spose so she didn’t ever have to look at your face, while you couldn’t see her disinterest and going through the motions- ow! Ow! Okay okay, that was a bit gratuitous I grant. So anyways, on this one carefully planned night, with all the contraption rigged up and primed, there you guys go and change up on us and she’s on top, her head where yours was supposed to have been. And, well you know the rest…”
“If you wanted to take me out, why not just do it and dump me in an alleyway or the desert? Why was she supposed to have to witness it?”
“Because it would ensure her silence. She would know the price of opening her yap”
“You do know, you of all people, that I have been trained in all manner of torture. Affronts to the body. Grievous physical afflictions and psychological degradation”
“I’m fully aware of that. I wrote the textbook on it”
“Well you’re just about to become reacquainted with it. A refresher course”
“End of the Vanilla Man. I’ll have to make a note in your file before you get started on me”
“I demand to see my personnel file”
“The Agency is sorry for your loss. If there’s anything you need to help with the funeral arrangements, you have all our resources at your disposal- ow!”
“I w-a-n-t to read my file”
“Well you can put in a request in writing to access it-“
“Take this gun at your forehead is my request. Six bullets in the chamber, that’s double triplicate”
“Real tough guy pistol whipping someone sat on a chair”
“That barely scratches the surface of what you’ve had me do in the past”
“Course the psych report did highlight certain ego issues. But not the id. That was all in order I’m glad to report”
“Just give me the goddamned file”
“The missions are in another file-“
“I’m not interested in the mission stuff”
“But if someone tried to kill you, you’ll need to look back over the missions to work out who”
“I know who tried to kill me. It was you fuckers”
“Don’t flatter yourself”
“How do I know it was you? I saw the timer and the device rigged up. It’s all Agency kit”
“On the job even when on the job eh? Ow! One of our enemies could frame us, make it look like we put the hit on you. I mean a beheading for goodness sakes. I know it's all the rage, but just not our style"
“I k-n-o-w it was you, because you screwed it up. Big time”
“…Well?”
“Well what?”
“You’re waiting for me to say it”
“Say what?”
“That we screwed it up because we couldn’t put our best agent on it”
“Nice double bind play. Prove I really did have ego issues if I agree with you”
“Found what you’re looking for yet?”
“I never screwed up a single mission. So you can’t be icing me for that. Never disobeyed a directive, never gave you any trouble. It’s not about any money…”
“It’s always about you isn’t it? - Ow!”
“No, it’s about my wife who is lying on my bed in two pieces, fully bled out”
“Yes no more receiving head from her I’m afraid”
“You motherfucker! I’ll rip your head off your shoulders, see how you smile on the other side of your face across the room then”
“Ow, ow ow!”
“Fuck, there’s nothing in the file”
“Oh there’s everything in the file. Pass it me, let’s see if there are any clues there? Sexual orientation… Hetero”
“I was married for fourteen years. Longer than working for this backstabbing outfit”
“She wasn’t stabbed in the back- Ow! Stop hitting me”
“Stop playing games then. You know why this has happened. The directive would have come through your hands at some point, if you didn’t issue it yourself that is”
“I keep returning to the sexual orientation. You ever play away from home?”
“No. I loved her too much”
“Not even any honey trap missions? I’ll need that other file…”
“No. I never had any of those. You better not be playing for time here. Someone comes through that door and I plug you first”
“I’m simply trying to help you get some closure here. I’m telling you, it’s all about the sexual orientation”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You may not have done honey traps, but you’ve done enough surveillance work where you’ve recorded the mark making the beast with two backs before you lay him out on his back for good”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well we, um know the sexual predilections of all our agents as a matter of course”
“You snap us having sex?”
“Well it makes for good currency, or at least it did anyways before people started making their own porn and posting it online”
“You sick fucker. I bet you watched it in your downtime right? Made you all hot and hard did it?”
“Not really. And that’s kind of the point. In your case we didn’t have to update it. Ever. Like clockwork you two. Same night of the week. Exactly the same time at night. Same place within the house, the marital bed…”
“What’s wrong with that? We had a very loving marriage”
“If you away on assignment I bet you could just as effectively phone it in- Ow!”
“You’d know if I did, since you’re sure to have bugged my phone”
“It’s all just a bit… vanilla isn’t it? Ow! Well, tonight was the designated night of your termination from the Agency-“
“Why?”
“We felt you were, well, just too set in your ways. Not able to respond to our changing times. Gone stale”
“What, based on my sex life?”
“Of course not. But that was the exclamation mark on our analysis. Anyway, for years and years we’d seen you and your wife gently doggy. I ‘spose so she didn’t ever have to look at your face, while you couldn’t see her disinterest and going through the motions- ow! Ow! Okay okay, that was a bit gratuitous I grant. So anyways, on this one carefully planned night, with all the contraption rigged up and primed, there you guys go and change up on us and she’s on top, her head where yours was supposed to have been. And, well you know the rest…”
“If you wanted to take me out, why not just do it and dump me in an alleyway or the desert? Why was she supposed to have to witness it?”
“Because it would ensure her silence. She would know the price of opening her yap”
“You do know, you of all people, that I have been trained in all manner of torture. Affronts to the body. Grievous physical afflictions and psychological degradation”
“I’m fully aware of that. I wrote the textbook on it”
“Well you’re just about to become reacquainted with it. A refresher course”
“End of the Vanilla Man. I’ll have to make a note in your file before you get started on me”
September 14, 2014
If Music Be The Food Of Love - Songs about food
American Pie, songs about women called Candy, bubblegum pop... food is meat for coverage in music. So feast your senses on this cornucopia of nourishment, or not as we tuck into a chart of ten songs about grub. Enjoy!
1) Lee Scratch Perry - "Roast Fish & Cornbread"
Traditional Caribbean repast, traditional (ie pre-commercial) reggae. If you listen to some of the songs of this era, you can hear the water background as befits an island culture. Moreish.
2) Gary Clail - "Beef"
A song lacerating the treatment and slaughter of cattle for our consumption of meat. People preferred Morrisey's reedy exhortation that "Meat is Murder". I know which one gets my vote. Juicy.
3) The Undertones - "Mars Bars"
Throwaway song on the B-Side of the "Jimmy Jimmy" 4-track 7" single, but it grew a life of its own. More boyish than laddish which encapsulates the band. Toothsome.
4) Pink Floyd - "Apples And Oranges"
One of Syd Barrett Floyd's last offerings, this is a curious mix of the Beatlesque and psychedelic. it almost seems that the vocals are trying to catch up with the instrumentation, or that there are too many words to deliver and fit into the rhythm. Very odd. Tart.
5) Gang Of Four - "Cheesburger"
I love Go4 but they really seemed to have lost it by the time of their fourth album "Hard" where this track came from. Maybe they'd just sung all their protest lyrics that they had and run out of ideas, while the punk-funk vibe jarred with the critical nature of their lyrics. Since their recent return however, they seem to have rediscovered their mojo and their first album in years isn't half bad. Gristle.
6) Cop Shoot Cop - "Eggs For Rib"
If you want a bit of beef in your music, or even a bit of full English behind it, takes a bunch of Americans to deliver this glorious greasy spoon fry up of a song. No idea what the lyrics are on about, but love it all the same. Calorific.
7) The Carpenters - "Jambalaya"
Carpenters do Cajun, who knew? Hey it's the Carpenters, so what could be bad right? Is it in bad taste to include anorexia sufferer Karen Carpenter in a food-themed music chart? Piquant.
8) Jack White - "Sixteen Saltines"
Do the English have saltines? I love my crackers, Ritz, Water Biscuits etc, but can't say I've ever knowingly bitten into a salteen. To me it sounds like a dried fish or something like anchovies. Still it's a good riff and a half decent song. Seasoned.
9) Squeeze - "Pulling Mussels From The Shell"
A classic. I myself don't trust seafood as to its healthiness given the pollutants pumped or jettisoned in the seas, so don't indulge. But then I guess this song warns against trusting too much as well so I seem to be in step with its sentiments. Squeeze were one of those bands who you were glad populated the charts with a level of edge and quality that kept the bland pap music in check, but you never actually went out and owned any of their records yourself... Brackish.
10) Portishead - "Biscuit"
Not sure what this has to do with biscuits, but oh my what a voice dripping emotion. Savory.
1) Lee Scratch Perry - "Roast Fish & Cornbread"
Traditional Caribbean repast, traditional (ie pre-commercial) reggae. If you listen to some of the songs of this era, you can hear the water background as befits an island culture. Moreish.
2) Gary Clail - "Beef"
A song lacerating the treatment and slaughter of cattle for our consumption of meat. People preferred Morrisey's reedy exhortation that "Meat is Murder". I know which one gets my vote. Juicy.
3) The Undertones - "Mars Bars"
Throwaway song on the B-Side of the "Jimmy Jimmy" 4-track 7" single, but it grew a life of its own. More boyish than laddish which encapsulates the band. Toothsome.
4) Pink Floyd - "Apples And Oranges"
One of Syd Barrett Floyd's last offerings, this is a curious mix of the Beatlesque and psychedelic. it almost seems that the vocals are trying to catch up with the instrumentation, or that there are too many words to deliver and fit into the rhythm. Very odd. Tart.
5) Gang Of Four - "Cheesburger"
I love Go4 but they really seemed to have lost it by the time of their fourth album "Hard" where this track came from. Maybe they'd just sung all their protest lyrics that they had and run out of ideas, while the punk-funk vibe jarred with the critical nature of their lyrics. Since their recent return however, they seem to have rediscovered their mojo and their first album in years isn't half bad. Gristle.
6) Cop Shoot Cop - "Eggs For Rib"
If you want a bit of beef in your music, or even a bit of full English behind it, takes a bunch of Americans to deliver this glorious greasy spoon fry up of a song. No idea what the lyrics are on about, but love it all the same. Calorific.
7) The Carpenters - "Jambalaya"
Carpenters do Cajun, who knew? Hey it's the Carpenters, so what could be bad right? Is it in bad taste to include anorexia sufferer Karen Carpenter in a food-themed music chart? Piquant.
8) Jack White - "Sixteen Saltines"
Do the English have saltines? I love my crackers, Ritz, Water Biscuits etc, but can't say I've ever knowingly bitten into a salteen. To me it sounds like a dried fish or something like anchovies. Still it's a good riff and a half decent song. Seasoned.
9) Squeeze - "Pulling Mussels From The Shell"
A classic. I myself don't trust seafood as to its healthiness given the pollutants pumped or jettisoned in the seas, so don't indulge. But then I guess this song warns against trusting too much as well so I seem to be in step with its sentiments. Squeeze were one of those bands who you were glad populated the charts with a level of edge and quality that kept the bland pap music in check, but you never actually went out and owned any of their records yourself... Brackish.
10) Portishead - "Biscuit"
Not sure what this has to do with biscuits, but oh my what a voice dripping emotion. Savory.
September 11, 2014
Life Class - Friday Flash
They seem to keep their pets in two display cases towards the top of their countenances. Some double reinforce the case with vitreous frames, while others provide a little vitreous porthole for greater viewing. We had thought the creatures to be fish, but their range of movement seems very limited within their restricted space and really only laterally, as if bobbed from side to side by the waves. So perhaps they are planted and therefore closer to anemones or jellyfish. They don’t do much these pets, just press themselves against the perimeter of their cases forlornly. Occasionally some water is displaced through imperceptible movement and leaks out of the case and down the countenance. Peripheral flesh sluices react very rapidly to this from below and sweep the water away, but the surface beneath remains shiny, although there me be residue of salt. Little shutters come down at night veiling the pets from sight, presumably to allow the keepers access for maintenance and feeding. These shutters themselves seem organic as they can flicker and vibrate at various points during this period. Perhaps that is resonant from the pets’ sheer pleasure at being fed. Perhaps the keepers are visiting unimaginable acts upon them. 
The next structure is a mystifying one. We had thought it to be some sort of chemical grow bag, with two holes at the bottom for infusions and we have certainly seen the powdered white fertiliser and nitrates inserted. There must be some internal duct piping for channelling the nitrates up against gravity. Yet we have also seen red liquid dispensed back down through the apertures, so the crop yield seems to be a liquid one, though we have never observed this liquid being properly retained and stored in any systematic fashion. We have also regarded a heavier, more sludgier green deliquescence emanating through these outlets. They get swept up with a white plane of fabric and balled up and tossed as compost. This fluid is so viscous, we wonder if the white powder might actually be insecticide, or rather simply salt to assault the slugs that may plague the contents of the chemical grow bags inside. Yet we have never seen any dead slugs tumble forth from within the chamber. Truly it must possess some remarkable properties to so defy gravity. Further study is required.
Are the sides of the ensemble are two opened mother of pearl-like shells, although they lack for any nacreous sheen. Maybe there is some muscle memory at work here, for the cores are frequently plugged with tiny white buds dangling from the end of white strings. Boxed sounds emerge from these, perhaps to conjure up the lost sound of the sea the shells have been parted from. That the shells stand upright on their points, may suggest that they have been specially carved in the shape of the relief that receives and holds them in place. This is unclear at present. When they are not sealed with the recreations of pearl, sometimes wispy strands of seaweed can be seen creeping out of the cavity. Others, rather than the tiny nacreous boulders sealing the cleft, instead have huge architectural erections covering the whole of the shell. Again the sound of the sea is pumped through these dolmens, though these waves seem to be crashing far more voluminously. Sometimes these shell caverns are completely covered up by the creepers and vines that trail down them from above and they disappear from sight. Only a hanging groyne or buoy right at the tip of the isthmus marks them out as such and sometimes only one of the pair is thus pointed. Usually in those with less dense tendrils and shoots overhanging. Presumably since there is less unseen danger to signal.
The last feature is a grotto leading on to a series of miniature tombstones. Some tombstones are draped in metal presumably to protect the stones from grave robbers and other scavengers. Stringy green moss and lichens adorn the stones after they have been plied with scouring materials on the end of pronged handles thrust against them. A second wave of cleaning happens when night falls and a white abstergent is applied via a brush and then hosed off with water. None of our scouts have ever observed the transformation, but we know that when these miniature tombstones are removed from the grotto and planted in the earth, they grow and become much larger tombstones. Initially they darken in colour, but develop a glossy sheen to them, but in time this sheen fades and becomes dull. The elements and in particular acid rain bite into the tissue of the stone and leave marks with either straight lines or curlicues, which superficially could be misconstrued as some sort of symbolic communicative system, but these soon become eclipsed by mosses and lichens adhering to the stone that are not this time attempted to be erased.The level of evolution is adjudged to be low to middling and therefore no further time studying them is proposed.
September 8, 2014
Stem Cell - Friday Flash
He was going stir crazy here. Which was odd since this hotel room was infinitely more luxurious than any jail cell he’d occupied. A double bed which was both too spongy for a spine seasoned against prison cots and which moved on its castors rather than being chained in place to the floor. The space afforded by it being ‘King-Sized’ was also fazing. A bed fit for a king, but a king currently without a realm to lord it over. He couldn’t settle either in its middle, which seemed too far from either edge for any emergency exit, while to favor clinging to one side over the other still unnerved him, as all that expanse behind left him feeling vulnerable to any shiv attack from that direction. Even turning the bed and moving it against the wall hadn’t solved that unease.
The carpet was too plush under his feet, which entailed he had to keep his shoes on to cut out the excruciating feel of the pile against his callused flesh. The curtains were made from such a flimsy fabric, it meant too much sunlight came through the tiffany material and stopped him from sleeping, when he was used to the pure prison blackout at night. And the en suite bathroom with the fluffy robe, let’s not even begin to dissect the alienness of that set up. He supposed hotel rooms were not intended to have their guests holed up in them twenty-four seven, hence their design of punishment through sumptuousness. Frills rather than thrills.
Yet there were some compensations. Not least the mini-fridge, though that was finite since he had banned the maid-service from entry which meant that his fridge couldn’t be restocked. Neither could he risk room service, besides his supplies of jerky and chips were holding out just fine. So he was rationing his consumption of alcohol. But it was hard man, so damn hard. He stared at the fridge door but it was early yet.
He spun off the corner of the bed and scooped up his knife from under the pillow. He strode over to the dresser and picked up the block of wood and resumed his carving. Another habit he’d carried over from prison life, though out in the free world he was afforded a better quality of blade. Scrimshawing it was called, practised by sailors on the high seas to while away the tedium of days without any land being in sight. Those fellas were just as incarcerated as any guy with three strikes and out on his rap sheet. And they hadn’t gone into it any more willingly than cons; they’d been press-ganged by thugs, just as crims were by cops.
The wood hadn’t yet taken any firm outline to suggest what it might be in the shape of. At this juncture, it could become an image of anything. Like human stem cells. Odd name that, ‘stem’ implied it was a stopping up of something. Like stemming the blood flow. The gush. Stemming the source of a leak. The snitch. And of course the word ‘cell’, the single word that had most defined his life up until now. The cell as a unit of one, of isolation and punishment, yet here in biology just one of a huge structure built by millions of replicas. There was no uniqueness in that. He knew ‘stem’ also meant the trunk of something, the solid structure at the centre holding everything together. From which all else sprouted. He couldn’t hold both meanings of the word together in his mind. Stemming was unutterably to do with lopping off a body part. Deadheading. Pruning.
Though unformed, the wood was definitely erring towards the human. Blockish voodoo. Though it wasn’t a conscious impulse, he knew that it was heading towards a simulacrum of his wife. He even had a lock of her hair in his wallet that he could append to the figurine if he chose. But it would be pointless since she was already dead and beyond the persecutions of sympathetic magic. Or shouldn’t it really be unsympathetic magic?
He looked at the blood red digits of the digital alarm clock by the bed. Yes at last, it was time to allow himself to crack open the fridge. He opened the door and was aghast to see there was just a solitary miniature bottle left. Nine pins down on the bowling lane, no chance of either a strike or a spare. The label announced it was a tiny bottle of Chardonnay. Wine wasn’t really his bag, but one thing he knew was that if it came with a screw top rather than a cork, it was likely low-grade. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. He hesitated, for while he felt at ease pitching the spirit measures straight from the bottle down his throat, it didn’t seem quite right doing it with wine, miniature or otherwise. He retrieved a glass from the bathroom. It was meant to stow a toothbrush, but he hadn’t brought one with him. He poured the wine, its puddle barely covering the bottom of the glass.
As he sipped the drink like a bird, he opened the tiny freezer compartment. In between the ice cube trays lay another miniature bottle, though one without recognisable label or branded shape. He removed it and held it up to the light of the window. The blood had frozen to a darkened hue. He knew the cells were all dead, for he’d not added any chemicals to remove the blood’s water content. Yeah he’d stemmed this leaky cell for good. Iced one bitch snitch that would never testify against him. His knife had wrought much more direct unsympathetic magic on her flesh. No spousal immunity for her.
He drained his glass and transferred the blood miniature from the freezer to the chill part of the fridge instead. He had one more bottle left to drink after all, then he’d hightail it from this place.
The carpet was too plush under his feet, which entailed he had to keep his shoes on to cut out the excruciating feel of the pile against his callused flesh. The curtains were made from such a flimsy fabric, it meant too much sunlight came through the tiffany material and stopped him from sleeping, when he was used to the pure prison blackout at night. And the en suite bathroom with the fluffy robe, let’s not even begin to dissect the alienness of that set up. He supposed hotel rooms were not intended to have their guests holed up in them twenty-four seven, hence their design of punishment through sumptuousness. Frills rather than thrills.
Yet there were some compensations. Not least the mini-fridge, though that was finite since he had banned the maid-service from entry which meant that his fridge couldn’t be restocked. Neither could he risk room service, besides his supplies of jerky and chips were holding out just fine. So he was rationing his consumption of alcohol. But it was hard man, so damn hard. He stared at the fridge door but it was early yet.
He spun off the corner of the bed and scooped up his knife from under the pillow. He strode over to the dresser and picked up the block of wood and resumed his carving. Another habit he’d carried over from prison life, though out in the free world he was afforded a better quality of blade. Scrimshawing it was called, practised by sailors on the high seas to while away the tedium of days without any land being in sight. Those fellas were just as incarcerated as any guy with three strikes and out on his rap sheet. And they hadn’t gone into it any more willingly than cons; they’d been press-ganged by thugs, just as crims were by cops.
The wood hadn’t yet taken any firm outline to suggest what it might be in the shape of. At this juncture, it could become an image of anything. Like human stem cells. Odd name that, ‘stem’ implied it was a stopping up of something. Like stemming the blood flow. The gush. Stemming the source of a leak. The snitch. And of course the word ‘cell’, the single word that had most defined his life up until now. The cell as a unit of one, of isolation and punishment, yet here in biology just one of a huge structure built by millions of replicas. There was no uniqueness in that. He knew ‘stem’ also meant the trunk of something, the solid structure at the centre holding everything together. From which all else sprouted. He couldn’t hold both meanings of the word together in his mind. Stemming was unutterably to do with lopping off a body part. Deadheading. Pruning.
Though unformed, the wood was definitely erring towards the human. Blockish voodoo. Though it wasn’t a conscious impulse, he knew that it was heading towards a simulacrum of his wife. He even had a lock of her hair in his wallet that he could append to the figurine if he chose. But it would be pointless since she was already dead and beyond the persecutions of sympathetic magic. Or shouldn’t it really be unsympathetic magic?
He looked at the blood red digits of the digital alarm clock by the bed. Yes at last, it was time to allow himself to crack open the fridge. He opened the door and was aghast to see there was just a solitary miniature bottle left. Nine pins down on the bowling lane, no chance of either a strike or a spare. The label announced it was a tiny bottle of Chardonnay. Wine wasn’t really his bag, but one thing he knew was that if it came with a screw top rather than a cork, it was likely low-grade. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. He hesitated, for while he felt at ease pitching the spirit measures straight from the bottle down his throat, it didn’t seem quite right doing it with wine, miniature or otherwise. He retrieved a glass from the bathroom. It was meant to stow a toothbrush, but he hadn’t brought one with him. He poured the wine, its puddle barely covering the bottom of the glass.
As he sipped the drink like a bird, he opened the tiny freezer compartment. In between the ice cube trays lay another miniature bottle, though one without recognisable label or branded shape. He removed it and held it up to the light of the window. The blood had frozen to a darkened hue. He knew the cells were all dead, for he’d not added any chemicals to remove the blood’s water content. Yeah he’d stemmed this leaky cell for good. Iced one bitch snitch that would never testify against him. His knife had wrought much more direct unsympathetic magic on her flesh. No spousal immunity for her.
He drained his glass and transferred the blood miniature from the freezer to the chill part of the fridge instead. He had one more bottle left to drink after all, then he’d hightail it from this place.
from The Masquerade Crew's prompts, Chardonnay, a hotel room and a knife
September 5, 2014
Will We In The West Never Learn? - ISIS a triumph of manipulation
Two beheading videos and the threat of a third with a British victim this time have changed the whole political landscape. Politicians are now talking about military intervention in Iraq and the war-weary public ground down by body bags from Afghanistan and Iraq before it are not shouting them down quite as vociferously as they would even six months ago. Well those were some video productions then if they have provoked such a response. ISIS have played the propaganda war perfectly.
Because they want Western troops to engage them in battle. They know that nothing will recruit numbers to their cause, more than infidel soldiers in the cities with holy Muslim shrines, or aerial bombing killing innocent civilians. It happened in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein being booted out of power. I called it a "Grand Tour", the opportunity for Muslim sons to kill a GI in every holy city. ISIS initially represented a perverted version of the International Brigades, going to fight the tyrant dictator Assad as against Franco in Spain. But reports are now beginning to filter back about how disillusioned some British recruits to ISIS have become, because they are not nobly fighting against Assad. Instead they are engaged against other Jihadi sects, or off fighting in Iraq and a party to atrocities they didn't necessarily sign up to. Western Jihadis are second class citizens in ISIS, since they are seen to lack the military skills having not fought in previous campaigns stretching back to Bosnia, Chechnya and of course Afghanistan. While culturally they are not well versed in notions of a Caliphate and certain Medieval practises such as forced conversion and beheading.
And this is the point. The Caliphate left alone to its devices would in all likelihood collapse under its own violent excesses. (It reminds me of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia which cut its own throat by continuous purges for in the name of purity). But if the West dedicate itself to destroying the Caliphate, that can only inject new life and support to its cause. The West may eventually be able to bring it down, but at what cost and what future fertile ground for continued extreme islamic opposition to all things Western? You might cavil that we cannot simply let the Caliphate exist while it carries out mass executions in cold blood of any sects who won't convert to their religious ideology. But that is happening right now without much in the way of the West being able to prevent it. And it only further makes the case that ISIS continuing to function this way will push all its opponents with Syria and Iraq to unite against them, just in the name of self-preservation. I understand the case that the West could never trust the Caliphate not to try and expand its borders from where it stands now, but there is nothing to stop the West acceding to the de facto Caliphate borders as they are and protecting from further incursion with suitable defensive forces. Give the Caliphate time to destroy itself.
I am not a politician, I have no military background nor do I work in Intelligence. I am just a writer, doing a bit of research from open sourced information and then taking a pause to actually think about how this thing might play out. I wrote a work of fiction back in 2011 about suicide bombers and the recruitment to a death cult and ISIS is the next development out of this. It is very clear to my mind that if the West went to war with the Caliphate, it would be an unmitigated disaster. It would play into the hands of ISIS strategists and rather than allow the Caliphate to fall under its own stresses, would ensure people rallied to its cause and therefore a much longer campaign to defeat it.
Breakdown of ISIS fighters by country of origin
"Not In My Name" UK US - The journey to recruitment for radical Islam
Alternatively, they paraded before a paramilitary hawk, sharpening the recruit’s claws on his steel gauntlet. The logic he advances, is that the mission should be beyond fear, for no other soldier has such certainty of whether he will return alive or dead from his next action. Whereas the suicide bomber knows to the precise minute. What a boon.
By whichever method, these fellows are striking a deal with their egos. They don’t shut them off, rather they believe they are swapping a pretty squalid life not for death, but for another, improved life up in the clouds. A literal leap of faith. Trouble is, when their heads are blown upwards off their body towards Heaven, sure as hell it hurtles back down to earth under the prosaic ministrations of gravity. Does each bomber actually possess the finer shades of understanding, exactly what the Holy Text suggests is in store for them? Ultimately, they remain just teenagers on the most extreme and ugly of promises. And as to the secularist bombers, they too are left in no uncertain terms that they will become pin-up poster boys on the walls of Gaza and Baghdad. This is the poor man’s version of celebrity. A pension from Iran or Syria will see that their family is well provided for, a sort of posthumous dower. Or a divorce settlement."
Because they want Western troops to engage them in battle. They know that nothing will recruit numbers to their cause, more than infidel soldiers in the cities with holy Muslim shrines, or aerial bombing killing innocent civilians. It happened in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein being booted out of power. I called it a "Grand Tour", the opportunity for Muslim sons to kill a GI in every holy city. ISIS initially represented a perverted version of the International Brigades, going to fight the tyrant dictator Assad as against Franco in Spain. But reports are now beginning to filter back about how disillusioned some British recruits to ISIS have become, because they are not nobly fighting against Assad. Instead they are engaged against other Jihadi sects, or off fighting in Iraq and a party to atrocities they didn't necessarily sign up to. Western Jihadis are second class citizens in ISIS, since they are seen to lack the military skills having not fought in previous campaigns stretching back to Bosnia, Chechnya and of course Afghanistan. While culturally they are not well versed in notions of a Caliphate and certain Medieval practises such as forced conversion and beheading.
And this is the point. The Caliphate left alone to its devices would in all likelihood collapse under its own violent excesses. (It reminds me of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia which cut its own throat by continuous purges for in the name of purity). But if the West dedicate itself to destroying the Caliphate, that can only inject new life and support to its cause. The West may eventually be able to bring it down, but at what cost and what future fertile ground for continued extreme islamic opposition to all things Western? You might cavil that we cannot simply let the Caliphate exist while it carries out mass executions in cold blood of any sects who won't convert to their religious ideology. But that is happening right now without much in the way of the West being able to prevent it. And it only further makes the case that ISIS continuing to function this way will push all its opponents with Syria and Iraq to unite against them, just in the name of self-preservation. I understand the case that the West could never trust the Caliphate not to try and expand its borders from where it stands now, but there is nothing to stop the West acceding to the de facto Caliphate borders as they are and protecting from further incursion with suitable defensive forces. Give the Caliphate time to destroy itself.
I am not a politician, I have no military background nor do I work in Intelligence. I am just a writer, doing a bit of research from open sourced information and then taking a pause to actually think about how this thing might play out. I wrote a work of fiction back in 2011 about suicide bombers and the recruitment to a death cult and ISIS is the next development out of this. It is very clear to my mind that if the West went to war with the Caliphate, it would be an unmitigated disaster. It would play into the hands of ISIS strategists and rather than allow the Caliphate to fall under its own stresses, would ensure people rallied to its cause and therefore a much longer campaign to defeat it.
Breakdown of ISIS fighters by country of origin
"Not In My Name" UK US - The journey to recruitment for radical Islam
"graduation from a human being, into a human bomb. The knack, is to change the bomber’s desires from embracing life, into a hankering after death.Interview after interview, I was presented with similar, reedily intoned versions of how this was brought about. One strand had them sat drooling at the feet of some hierophant in a madrassa, as he categorically untangles the frayed threads of life, while they scratch their carpet-fluff beards and nod accordance. I’ll tell you something, if I was promised myriad virgins in the Afterlife, I’d probably enlist myself. Blissfully blow myself to Kingdom Come. Presumably, it’s one virgin to tend each bit of the body atomised by high-explosive. Of course, rather than nubile women, why couldn’t it equally be the ghosts of the 72 camels slain for Fatima’s wedding? That’s the drawback with numerical symbolism. It’s open to double counting.
Alternatively, they paraded before a paramilitary hawk, sharpening the recruit’s claws on his steel gauntlet. The logic he advances, is that the mission should be beyond fear, for no other soldier has such certainty of whether he will return alive or dead from his next action. Whereas the suicide bomber knows to the precise minute. What a boon.
By whichever method, these fellows are striking a deal with their egos. They don’t shut them off, rather they believe they are swapping a pretty squalid life not for death, but for another, improved life up in the clouds. A literal leap of faith. Trouble is, when their heads are blown upwards off their body towards Heaven, sure as hell it hurtles back down to earth under the prosaic ministrations of gravity. Does each bomber actually possess the finer shades of understanding, exactly what the Holy Text suggests is in store for them? Ultimately, they remain just teenagers on the most extreme and ugly of promises. And as to the secularist bombers, they too are left in no uncertain terms that they will become pin-up poster boys on the walls of Gaza and Baghdad. This is the poor man’s version of celebrity. A pension from Iran or Syria will see that their family is well provided for, a sort of posthumous dower. Or a divorce settlement."
September 3, 2014
Wrist-Watching - Friday Flash
The perfumer sprays her scent on to her own wrist and then offers it to the man to incline towards her in order to inhale its bouquet. He only smells the aroma of the rest of her.
Leather straps had always rotted away in time, so he had opted for the segmented metal strips to cincture his modish watch. When he removed it at the end of the day, he liked the inhuman indentations left in his skin, like an insect’s thorax, or a barcode.
The man shot his cuffs with great deliberation. The aurora of his diamond encrusted cufflinks twinkled before their eclipse beneath the jacket’s sleeves. She was attracted to them as to the eye spots of a butterfly which draws down a predator into the miasma of confusion.
The man slammed against a wire mesh fence cutting off his escape. He beat it in despair before turning and offering his forearms for the cops to cuff. They whipped him round and bound him behind his back, spurning his supplication.
The man brought his wrists together perpendicularly, making the sign of the cross to ward off the invisible tormentors who were whispering in his ear. In his agitation, he rubbed them together like sticks, as if trying to ignite and purge himself.
The woman studied the veins in her pallid wrist. As her finger traced the filaments, she felt like she had been knitted together in yarns of blues and reds. Only somewhere along the journey she had misplaced the knit pattern.
Having scanned the room for the invigilator, the girl surreptitiously eased her blazer’s sleeve down and consulted the cheat notes she had inscribed on her wrist. Sweat had made the ink run.
The woman raised her arm to her mouth as if to wipe away some mote, or bite off some frayed strand on her cuff, but as her jaw muscles jagged behind her half-baked occlusion, she was fooling no-one. She was conversing with her unseen controllers.
She had nails and bloodied stigmata tattooed on to the underside of both wrists. She was still awaiting her Mary Magdalene to come tenderly bathe her wounds, though there seemed legionnaires aplenty ready to skewer her with their long-stemmed spears.
She inverted the knife so that the blunt edge was against her skin and moved it up and down the length of her wrists. The blade chafed harshly against the scarred levees of previous communions between the two.
Leather straps had always rotted away in time, so he had opted for the segmented metal strips to cincture his modish watch. When he removed it at the end of the day, he liked the inhuman indentations left in his skin, like an insect’s thorax, or a barcode.
The man shot his cuffs with great deliberation. The aurora of his diamond encrusted cufflinks twinkled before their eclipse beneath the jacket’s sleeves. She was attracted to them as to the eye spots of a butterfly which draws down a predator into the miasma of confusion.
The man slammed against a wire mesh fence cutting off his escape. He beat it in despair before turning and offering his forearms for the cops to cuff. They whipped him round and bound him behind his back, spurning his supplication.
The man brought his wrists together perpendicularly, making the sign of the cross to ward off the invisible tormentors who were whispering in his ear. In his agitation, he rubbed them together like sticks, as if trying to ignite and purge himself.
The woman studied the veins in her pallid wrist. As her finger traced the filaments, she felt like she had been knitted together in yarns of blues and reds. Only somewhere along the journey she had misplaced the knit pattern.
Having scanned the room for the invigilator, the girl surreptitiously eased her blazer’s sleeve down and consulted the cheat notes she had inscribed on her wrist. Sweat had made the ink run.
The woman raised her arm to her mouth as if to wipe away some mote, or bite off some frayed strand on her cuff, but as her jaw muscles jagged behind her half-baked occlusion, she was fooling no-one. She was conversing with her unseen controllers.
She had nails and bloodied stigmata tattooed on to the underside of both wrists. She was still awaiting her Mary Magdalene to come tenderly bathe her wounds, though there seemed legionnaires aplenty ready to skewer her with their long-stemmed spears.
She inverted the knife so that the blunt edge was against her skin and moved it up and down the length of her wrists. The blade chafed harshly against the scarred levees of previous communions between the two.
August 28, 2014
Perspective - Friday Flash
Planet C3762YBReport of the Cultural Bureau(cont)Exhibit 273-275National Look Up AT The Sky Day
Triptych
It is perhaps pertinent that the only aureole of light in the entire tableau, rests not over the hooded figures, but that from the overhead streetlamp casting down on them. Indeed the artist has chosen to efface the features of the monks beneath their cowls. The chiaroscuro is clearly in place, with the dark, heavy tones of the raiment of the holy men, their pallid hands the sole pale contrast, suggestive perhaps of how fragile the flesh lies. Or perhaps the diaphanous nature of prayer, as these hands are deployed in all manner of encoded gestures just adjacent to the supplicant, transferring their devotional energies into his body. The craquelure in the lead monk’s leather jacket attests to this interesting reversion to oil paints rather than the acrylic which after all would echo the fabrics worn by the rest of his brotherhood in the picture. The sheen of sweat in the supplicant is minutely picked out by the artist and there is an echo of the shape of these perspiration drops in the anointing of him with red pigmented droplets from the head monk’s ordination dagger. The supplicant’s (presumed) outstretched fleshy hands are eclipsed by the circle of the monks, as if he has yet to develop the more pliant, yielding markers of flesh that these holy men have ascended to. He remains a creature bound head to toe in the earthly tissue of raiment. This is further reinforced by the translucency at the edge of the monks’ forms, whereas for the supplicant there seems only to be a black void encompassing his outline. Perhaps this is suggestive of a negative, impure energy he has yet to slough from his doubting ontological being. The rictus on his face could be the dread at the start of his metamorphosis, or it could be the residual distaste as he struggles internally with his unwillingness to make the leap of faith, and figuratively give himself into the arms of the monks. That rictus is echoed in the expression of the dog that hovers around the men. But the genius of the artist is it’s not only the dog’s expression, but the whole convolution of its body as it skittishly keeps itself on the fringes of the action. Another leifmotif is the cylindrical metal chalice that rolls on its axis on the ground. A bead of golden liquid hangs pendulously from its lip, again echoing the sweat beads of the supplicant.
In the middle of the three panels, the supplicant is shown bowing, as now it is his mass which swallows and occludes the lead monk’s ordination rod. The other monks have almost ceded the ground to their leader, as they fly back centrifugally from the centre, pressing themselves against the margins of the canvas. The dog has retreated to the base of the lamp post where it squats, its rictus even more predominant now, so that its tongue is exposed in exquisite brushwork detail. The chalice has become distorted in form, (an allusion to future Cubist style?) hammered flat, perhaps beneath the foot of the supplicant or one of the monks. While in the final panel the canvas is emptied of the entire bustle of its two predecessors (is this what they mean by ‘vanishing point’? The guidebooks are a touch unclear as to the meaning of this term). Now the supplicant lies prostrate, presumably the humility required and recognised of his new lowly status before his divinity. His entry into stillness as portrayed by the starkness of the image. There are a scattering of mass tones of the red pigment about his form while a more atramentous glaze limns the ground where it borders his body, as if to represent some sort of holy spirit entering his corpus. The technique of this final panel is one of sfumato, the whole image being hazier and more smoky than the previous two, suggestive of the more numinous and divine powers that abound in this frame. It as if the materiality of both dog and the chalice have evaporated in an extramundane puff of smoke.
Exhibit 276National Yo-Yo Day
Still Life
The light source for the picture is that of the sun, but it is refracted and filtered through a thin column of smoke ascending in the foreground. The architecture is framed by the heaped automobiles through which the viewer is granted snatched or privileged access, perhaps like that of a voyeur, that in a homegrown resident would provoke feelings of guilt, but which in us of course we experience no such sentiment. Intriguingly the colour scheme has been reversed by the artist. Since the atmosphere above the ground is depicted in gun-metal grey, tinged with pink, which is of course what we might expect to see in the portrayal of the automobiles. However, they are rendered in the burnt umbers and russets suggestive of decay, corrosion and oxidation which one would normally associate with the polluted atmosphere…
Triptych
It is perhaps pertinent that the only aureole of light in the entire tableau, rests not over the hooded figures, but that from the overhead streetlamp casting down on them. Indeed the artist has chosen to efface the features of the monks beneath their cowls. The chiaroscuro is clearly in place, with the dark, heavy tones of the raiment of the holy men, their pallid hands the sole pale contrast, suggestive perhaps of how fragile the flesh lies. Or perhaps the diaphanous nature of prayer, as these hands are deployed in all manner of encoded gestures just adjacent to the supplicant, transferring their devotional energies into his body. The craquelure in the lead monk’s leather jacket attests to this interesting reversion to oil paints rather than the acrylic which after all would echo the fabrics worn by the rest of his brotherhood in the picture. The sheen of sweat in the supplicant is minutely picked out by the artist and there is an echo of the shape of these perspiration drops in the anointing of him with red pigmented droplets from the head monk’s ordination dagger. The supplicant’s (presumed) outstretched fleshy hands are eclipsed by the circle of the monks, as if he has yet to develop the more pliant, yielding markers of flesh that these holy men have ascended to. He remains a creature bound head to toe in the earthly tissue of raiment. This is further reinforced by the translucency at the edge of the monks’ forms, whereas for the supplicant there seems only to be a black void encompassing his outline. Perhaps this is suggestive of a negative, impure energy he has yet to slough from his doubting ontological being. The rictus on his face could be the dread at the start of his metamorphosis, or it could be the residual distaste as he struggles internally with his unwillingness to make the leap of faith, and figuratively give himself into the arms of the monks. That rictus is echoed in the expression of the dog that hovers around the men. But the genius of the artist is it’s not only the dog’s expression, but the whole convolution of its body as it skittishly keeps itself on the fringes of the action. Another leifmotif is the cylindrical metal chalice that rolls on its axis on the ground. A bead of golden liquid hangs pendulously from its lip, again echoing the sweat beads of the supplicant.
In the middle of the three panels, the supplicant is shown bowing, as now it is his mass which swallows and occludes the lead monk’s ordination rod. The other monks have almost ceded the ground to their leader, as they fly back centrifugally from the centre, pressing themselves against the margins of the canvas. The dog has retreated to the base of the lamp post where it squats, its rictus even more predominant now, so that its tongue is exposed in exquisite brushwork detail. The chalice has become distorted in form, (an allusion to future Cubist style?) hammered flat, perhaps beneath the foot of the supplicant or one of the monks. While in the final panel the canvas is emptied of the entire bustle of its two predecessors (is this what they mean by ‘vanishing point’? The guidebooks are a touch unclear as to the meaning of this term). Now the supplicant lies prostrate, presumably the humility required and recognised of his new lowly status before his divinity. His entry into stillness as portrayed by the starkness of the image. There are a scattering of mass tones of the red pigment about his form while a more atramentous glaze limns the ground where it borders his body, as if to represent some sort of holy spirit entering his corpus. The technique of this final panel is one of sfumato, the whole image being hazier and more smoky than the previous two, suggestive of the more numinous and divine powers that abound in this frame. It as if the materiality of both dog and the chalice have evaporated in an extramundane puff of smoke.
Exhibit 276National Yo-Yo Day
Still Life
The light source for the picture is that of the sun, but it is refracted and filtered through a thin column of smoke ascending in the foreground. The architecture is framed by the heaped automobiles through which the viewer is granted snatched or privileged access, perhaps like that of a voyeur, that in a homegrown resident would provoke feelings of guilt, but which in us of course we experience no such sentiment. Intriguingly the colour scheme has been reversed by the artist. Since the atmosphere above the ground is depicted in gun-metal grey, tinged with pink, which is of course what we might expect to see in the portrayal of the automobiles. However, they are rendered in the burnt umbers and russets suggestive of decay, corrosion and oxidation which one would normally associate with the polluted atmosphere…
August 19, 2014
Rebirth - Friday Flash
When he finally regained consciousness, his first picture was a vista of sparks and coruscations as if he were witnessing the birth of the cosmos. He rent the air with a scream that pierced the universe. Partly from the pain pent up from the entire time he had been in a coma, but also from the sudden inundation of all the suppressed senses held under for the same duration. Inside the projection screen of his mind, he could recall the features of the man throttling him. But his eyes were registering nothing outwards, other than amorphous shades of black and white with twinkling pain flashes. Maybe he was actually dead after all and he was merely dreaming these serrated sensations as some delusion of life.
Somewhere in the yonder of the void, the doctors explained that there were neurological issues brought about through the lack of oxygen under constriction. The police whispered in his ear that they had caught his assailant and there was evidence aplenty to guarantee he would be put away for life. He had another searing body-wide paroxysm that cleaved the universe in two, as he realised he could neither respond with word nor gesture. Or perhaps it was just the conflagration of diverse emotions, from relief, through rage to fear. What did they mean ‘neurological issues’?
The medics simplified it for him as ‘brain damage’. His family testified he was lucky to be alive. The physios stated that now the hard work really began. He heard the words, but couldn’t understand what they were saying. He couldn’t put the pieces together. The physios said that was exactly what they had to do with him. To reconnect parts of his brain to his body. At least those black and white dancing hues had settled down and begun to cohere into shapes and depth. An elaborate regimen of drugs brought his physical pain under control, but his mental maladies would not be so ductile.
First they had to train him to lift up his head and support it. As the locus of the original trauma, this was a monumental feat to achieve. Each flex of the cervical muscles, each tiny motion of the head, pricked vivid images and wild flashes back to when his neck was being assailed by the other man’s hands. Every time he thought he was going to blackout. He imagined he could feel the force of the sensations from his body reaching up to petition his brain for processing, but held in abeyance by an impenetrable barricade where they just couldn’t cross. This anguish was far more deleterious than any to do with swollen sinew or traumatic memories. He raged impotently at what he had become, to what he had been reduced. His brain was feverishly trying to fire messages across dead zones. And such emotion with nowhere to go to be discharged by a broken body, just heaped the torment further upon him.
Once he mastered controlling his head, they got him to work on sitting up in his bed. Then they rebuilt the motions he needed to chew his food and swallow, so that they could remove the drips and tubes sustaining him. They gently pincered his chin and worked his jaw for him. Even babies didn’t have to suffer this indignity. He reclaimed the ability to drink from cups without spouts and without the liquid dribbling back out of any crookedly sealed lips. They also worked on teaching him how to speak again. Now he realised he had fully become a toddler for the second time in his life. That all his primal howl on reentering the world had lacked for, was a midwife slapping life and air into him. Instead he had burned into his retinas, the image of his would-be killer fulfilling the opposite role of taking the final air from his lungs and delivering him into death. It spurred him on all the harder to grab on to this his rebirth.
After he managed sitting up, he was taught how to structure the movements to feed himself with a spoon. His speech was slurred, but he reacquired some gestural movement in his hands to bolster his meaning. His face however remained slanted and his expression frozen. He was transferred into a wheelchair and for the first time was able to exercise his eyes on sights other than the four walls of his ward. He was being wheeled like a baby in a buggy he thought ruefully. In the hospital gym they toiled with him to define his musculature and begin the long march to getting him to stand, to support his own weight and eventually to walk. When finally he had mastered an awkward, angular shuffle, he could take himself off to the bathroom so finally there were no more of commodes and nappies.
He could dress himself as long as he perched on his bed to do so. He relearned how to clean his teeth. He drew pictures in crayon that were recognisable for the subjects he was representing. He had ticked off virtually every one of the developmental stages in his baby book for a second time. Except he had yet to manifest a smile.
Somewhere in the yonder of the void, the doctors explained that there were neurological issues brought about through the lack of oxygen under constriction. The police whispered in his ear that they had caught his assailant and there was evidence aplenty to guarantee he would be put away for life. He had another searing body-wide paroxysm that cleaved the universe in two, as he realised he could neither respond with word nor gesture. Or perhaps it was just the conflagration of diverse emotions, from relief, through rage to fear. What did they mean ‘neurological issues’?
The medics simplified it for him as ‘brain damage’. His family testified he was lucky to be alive. The physios stated that now the hard work really began. He heard the words, but couldn’t understand what they were saying. He couldn’t put the pieces together. The physios said that was exactly what they had to do with him. To reconnect parts of his brain to his body. At least those black and white dancing hues had settled down and begun to cohere into shapes and depth. An elaborate regimen of drugs brought his physical pain under control, but his mental maladies would not be so ductile.
First they had to train him to lift up his head and support it. As the locus of the original trauma, this was a monumental feat to achieve. Each flex of the cervical muscles, each tiny motion of the head, pricked vivid images and wild flashes back to when his neck was being assailed by the other man’s hands. Every time he thought he was going to blackout. He imagined he could feel the force of the sensations from his body reaching up to petition his brain for processing, but held in abeyance by an impenetrable barricade where they just couldn’t cross. This anguish was far more deleterious than any to do with swollen sinew or traumatic memories. He raged impotently at what he had become, to what he had been reduced. His brain was feverishly trying to fire messages across dead zones. And such emotion with nowhere to go to be discharged by a broken body, just heaped the torment further upon him.
Once he mastered controlling his head, they got him to work on sitting up in his bed. Then they rebuilt the motions he needed to chew his food and swallow, so that they could remove the drips and tubes sustaining him. They gently pincered his chin and worked his jaw for him. Even babies didn’t have to suffer this indignity. He reclaimed the ability to drink from cups without spouts and without the liquid dribbling back out of any crookedly sealed lips. They also worked on teaching him how to speak again. Now he realised he had fully become a toddler for the second time in his life. That all his primal howl on reentering the world had lacked for, was a midwife slapping life and air into him. Instead he had burned into his retinas, the image of his would-be killer fulfilling the opposite role of taking the final air from his lungs and delivering him into death. It spurred him on all the harder to grab on to this his rebirth.
After he managed sitting up, he was taught how to structure the movements to feed himself with a spoon. His speech was slurred, but he reacquired some gestural movement in his hands to bolster his meaning. His face however remained slanted and his expression frozen. He was transferred into a wheelchair and for the first time was able to exercise his eyes on sights other than the four walls of his ward. He was being wheeled like a baby in a buggy he thought ruefully. In the hospital gym they toiled with him to define his musculature and begin the long march to getting him to stand, to support his own weight and eventually to walk. When finally he had mastered an awkward, angular shuffle, he could take himself off to the bathroom so finally there were no more of commodes and nappies.
He could dress himself as long as he perched on his bed to do so. He relearned how to clean his teeth. He drew pictures in crayon that were recognisable for the subjects he was representing. He had ticked off virtually every one of the developmental stages in his baby book for a second time. Except he had yet to manifest a smile.
