Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Scratching around... Les Maux des Mots

I am losing the plot.

I never had a plot.

I had a few seeds and then wonder...










I am scratching around.

Coming up strawberries.

It wasn't until Laura wrote "Teaching like strawberries" this morning that I saw my mother's allotment garden...


Be attentive to gifts of love.

I am kneeling down close to the ground, turning over strawberry runners looking for ripe fruit.

She is scraping about with a hoe.

I can smell the soil.

It sticks to the palm of my hand.

The sun is bright, high clouds glide by.

I hadn't been down to the allotment for a few years now.

There was no reason to do so since my parents were buried.

It comes back to me now.

In an instant we are alive.

"What is for lunch?"

I am thinking of whether the fishmonger's there today.

"Memory is never a precise duplicate of the original...it is a continuing act of creation." 

Rosalind Cartwright.

I planted a few cuttings more in faith than hope.

How they are growing...wildly!

There will be fruit.

Fragile flowers...

I don't want morbid collections of pressed flowers.

It is the act of giving freely which interests me.



I don't want design, I want dialogue.

I don't want factory farming, I want wild meadows.

I don't want deadlines, I want lifelines.

I want joy and wonder at learning.


Lifelines.

I sent a few seeds to Autumm.

It felt like what I had to do.

I don't know why.

I had no idea what they were or whether they might still grow.

Half of them were French.

They were seemingly dormant.

I sent the seeds to Autumm.



Lo and behold, she does some sort of magic, talk'in her language and they come up strawberries in Laura's garden.


What sense can one make of that?



Autumm's started speaking French.

She has Salons d'Automne. (of course she would...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_d%27Automne



How the hell did that happen?

We've gone from strawberries to Fauvisme.

Scratching the surface.

It all started...(that is not true)

Are strawberries rhizomes?

"A rhizome, on the other hand, "ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles" 

"rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo"

Deleuze and Guattari.

It all started when Torn Halves talked of Kubrick.  (is that true?)

Sod it! My memory is not Storify.

If I find it written is it true?



It all started when Terry framed my scratching.

Is that true?



It all started when Terry shared his sun-rise.

That is true.

The rooster knows.



He reminded me that it...this... we...they... you....are exquisite corpses...

We are not finished any more than we started.

It all started when I scratched my flailing around in the dark onto a page.

I have been scratching around for years...



It all connects with MONOLITH.



It is blank.

Wonder is a black box.

Technology won't save us other than to amplify our screams.

Now I have an expression for a blank page.

Wonder is a black box.




Science taught me much.

We know so much...so little.


I have become attentive of scratching the surface.


Love and scratching.

I was reminded of Mary Ann's work.



As she scratches her soul, wild birds build nests in her porch.

Spring is come.

Life flows strong as body is frail.

It is curious.

Be attentive to gifts of love.



Zombie Pedagogy.

I am suddenly reminded of a word Jesse Stommel uses to talk of his pedagogy.

The word suddenly turns up in an article entitled: "Pity Poor Flesh: Terrible Bodies in the work of Carpenter, Cronenberg, and Romero."

'Tis an exquisite zombie corpse indeed...

http://brightlightsfilm.com/pity-poor-flesh-terrible-bodies-films-carpenter-cronenberg-romero/#.VzsDU5F97IV

“We are always already in a state of being on the cusp of an unraveling, a violent deconstruction, an explosive discharge of disruption and freeplay …”

We are unravelling...as we weave.

We are weaving...as we are unravelling.



Oh you wanted to know the word?

Sorry my memory fails me.

Jesse's word is: 


VISCERAL.

Our will is strong the body frail.

Ours...

I visit Chauvet Cave and am immersed in wilderness.

I am both caught up in wonder and lost in the 36,000 years of plot.


It is not the trampling herd of rhinoceros' that stun me.

It is the scratched claws of cave bears imitated by man.

Bear by autumn, man by summer.

It is the smudge of a red palm.

It is the bulging rock-formation become horse flank.

Listen to it breathe fire.

It is the stampede at torch-light.

It is a skull of a cave bear.



Is it science?
Is it art?
Is it sacred?

Please let us mean more than bloody words.

There is a scream of fear, longing, and fraility in the void.
It is ours...



"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."

Ralph Waldo Emerson.


3 comments:

  1. Very slow feldgang in the hedgerows and margins. Be patient.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You have a lifetime of words here, endlessly arrangeable...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for this, Simon. This has me thinking and jotting in your margins.

    ReplyDelete