Not quite anonymously, a boy with a thorn in his side emails to impugn me for quoting Morrissey, amongst other grievances. That joke, he says, isn’t funny anymore: it’s too close to home and it’s too near the bone.
Following the Kingsnorth fiasco, I am momentarily discombobulated by the ease with which I appear to be accidentally making blog-enemies. So at lunchtime, it being sunny, I took my discombobulation up the usual ascent into rusticity and sat myself on a handy rock, the better to contemplate glorious nature and restore some equilibrium.
Near the rock, however, was a manky old brown blanket, discarded and buzzing with flies. Vaguely sinister and corpse-like, it kept creeping into my thoughts. The blanket unsettled me. Later, I realised that it reminded me of the cloak left behind by Obi Wan Kenobe after Darth Vadar has sabred him down – a scene that caused me no little distress as a child.
Thanks to that blanket, the blogpost that was forming never quite did, or hasn't yet. So instead, let me point you to two excellent tragicomedies.
The first is Frank Key’s terrifying tale of a man who is impugned by a peasant.
The second is Ghanshyam Nair’s viscerally pathetic story of his sketchbook.
Read these posts, absorb them, ponder them at length. Then go moan for man and his hatful of hollow. Have a great weekend!
Your Journey into the contemplative madness of discombobulation reminds me of Charles Avery's islanders....
ReplyDelete"In a cluttered old workshop, watched by lithe animals in glass boxes, a bare-gummed old man hunches over his patient. The patient, a tiny winged creature, could be dead or alive, like the beady-eyed animals all around it. Backed into the claustrophobic space around the table, a man and woman, strung tight with anxiety, watch the operation."
Added sepia seemingly provided by Durer's descent into woodchipping, post Seventh Seal breaking. A similar state of grace is also sometimes achievable by standing in front of a Rauschenberg for 25 mins.
Last week I stood in front of two, plus Dali's Perpignan Stn for over sixty minutes, becoming positively charged and gravitationally neutralized.
Two fascinating posts by the way, hope the babyware catalogues don't depress you this weekend.
Oh, this is too much! I can see what you're doing. I can read between the lines, what with your slights against me and mine! Well, I'm not going to stand for this any more. I've had it with you, Brit! You've made a very powerful enemy! You will rue the day you mocked Uncle Dick!
ReplyDeletePS. You might want to drop by. I've had my first response. ;o)
ReplyDeleteNot the Rue MockDick gag again
ReplyDeleteHmm, all that impugning stuff makes me want to find my peasant - somehow my life now feels strangely empty....
ReplyDeleteYou can't be short of an impugning peasant or two in Romania, surely Gadjo?
ReplyDeleteI'm honoured beyond words to find the sketchbook thing sitting next to Mr Key's Squelcho!-fuelled tour de force.
ReplyDeleteBah! Bloody Euros! No wonder you're in terminal decline. You get impugned by a peasant and you go all artsy-fartsy and spin it into an meandering tale of cravats, bouffants and existential turmoil. Want to know how we in the New World handle that kind of stuff? Just check out the economical prologue to Dan Brown's new novel:
ReplyDelete"I was once impugned by a peasant, so I shot him. It haunted me until dinnertime."