Hymn to the Kingdom Beneath the Ground

Omega-rich seeds, in their natural state.

Seeds, hulled and roasted.

Chilli-hot seeds. Seeds, honey-sweet.

Seeds rich in zinc to boost virility;

seeds which make women fat with child.

Seeds that sow life, bring children.

Seeds that sow hate,

spread their poison quickly or slowly.

Seeds that sow love,

bound another to another, like Prometheus to his rock.

A song to the seeds of the melon,

and to a single seed of the pomegranate.

A poem to a noble Han lady,

and to Persephone, with the slender ankles.

And to her mother, the lovely-crowned Demeter, also.

A hymn to the kingdom beneath the ground,

where dark-haired Hades presides.

Sing, Muse, of these, in a clear voice,

sing of these two: a lady and a goddess, who are tethered to that realm,

the realm of dusk and darkness.

Xin Zhui, the wife to the son of Emperor Huidi,

was brought there wrapped in layers,

twenty layers of shrouds and cloth.

Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, as she gathered flowers,

was seized by Aidoneus, the lord of the dead,

and carried there on his horses.

The shrouded lady, wife of the Marquis of Dai,

was laid in a lacquered coffin,

and placed inside the chamber of a tomb.

The girl, still calling for her mother, daughter of Rhea,

was wedded to Hades, Zeus' own brother,

and as his wife ruled and received many, in the gloom.

Neither thought they would ever return to the land of light,

but both did.

Xin Zhui, so carefully preserved, was discovered,

her internal organs and blood vessels intact,

and her cause of death thus established:

heart attack, brought on, it is believed, by eating melon seeds.

Wise Persephone, mourned for by her mother, venerable Demeter,

was released on the commands of far-seeing Zeus,

but alas, dark-haired Hades gave her to eat a seed of the pomegranate,

so that for one third of the circling year

she must again go down to the kingdom beneath the ground.

Picture credit: Pluto and Persephone, Edmund Dulac (source: WikiArt).

This post was penned in 2019.

The Finest Clay

Fine clay, the finest clay ever made, the finest clay imaginable, that's what some people could be said to be made of. Thomas Mann's Felix Krull declares he is, yet circumstances make him a lift-boy, a waiter, a thief and a fraudster. A charmer. A likeable conman. Women love him; gentlemen want him to attend to their every need and enjoy his company. Because to Felix being made of finer clay means deserving riches: all the riches that the world of wealth offers, the world he was cruelly denied after his father's business went belly-up, and the family, after his father's suicide or accidental death as it was claimed, was broken apart.

Felix was born into this life, or an imitation of it built on illusion and credit, and he will find his way back to that life again. He will play off and up to his youth, his good looks and personality. And he will take the paths that are beneath him but for the shortest time, because in that time he will be noticed. And yet in his Confessions, as he gives them, you're lured into thinking it was all circumstance. It was good fortune, coincidence rather than calculation or premeditation; affairs that in other words he had no control over. Is he charming us with his Confessions? I think he is, rather.

Those that fall from the heights of the upper-class will rise again and will have less or no scruples about how they do so, although he's not as a young man of twenty as conniving as another man of twenty might have been. No, he's much more subtle. People don't like to think or admit they've been hoodwinked do they? And if a situation benefits both – the deceiver and the deceived – well, then, there's no cause for complaint, is there?

But am I only saying this because like Patricia Highsmith's anti-hero Mr. Ripley, I like Felix?

Could be. Could be.

Or is just that humans manipulate each other all the time, even when we don't think we are, and I'm happier acknowledging this than denying it, though I might deny all knowledge of my own manipulation - engineered or semi-conscious? You can't say that thought isn't interesting...

We all have our own agendas, the by-paths we wish and don't wish to follow, the paths we wish to create and bring about by whatever means which sometimes necessitates influencing others in their decisions and actions. I know I've done it even in minor affairs because the outcome I want becomes more important. And I would opine that everyone has at some point done that with a clear head though maybe with a less clear conscience, particularly if the result they wanted won out but had been achieved through sly agency.

Slippery. Trickery. Like that said of Odysseus.

Whatever you think about it, it is a talent. Though only if recognised and used, developed to an art. Most of us wouldn't; we just make use of it occasionally or in trivial point-scoring. Those in full possession of it possess it, it doesn't possess them. It's a tool they've mastered. And as is so often the case it rewards them: with popularity, with wealth, with high-ranking positions, with situations (or persons) they can take advantage of.

A voice in an important ear. A person of influence. A person of power. To have people come at your beck and call. To live in the lap of luxury. To be offered the finest things and sometimes, in spite of noted riches, not have to pay. This is what those who think they're made of finer clay are after. That's their goal. And most of them will probably make it too, if they're not already there, or back there if they've taken an unexpected fall.

Assuming different identities, different roles comes all too naturally: the style of addresses, the flourishes of signature and penmanship, when to have a deferential manner or carry a noble bearing, when to flatter and when to inspire confidence, and most important of all the clothes that make the man, which the mirror assures them they were born to wear.

Such men are like sponges, in that they soak up knowledge then sprout it as if it were their own, whilst the clay they're made from seals out the moisture and oxygen that would in the average person lead them to question their audacity and keeps their delusions intact.

Picture credit: Sistine Chapel Ceiling Creation of Adam, 1510, Michelangelo.

This post was penned in 2019.

Splashing Paint

Once again I've been reminded of The Queen's Croquet Ground (chapter eight of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) or more specifically the three gardeners in it: Two, Five and Seven, though perhaps unsurprisingly I don't live near the Queen nor overlook a croquet ground. You're forgiven if you thought in Surrey the latter was possible. Maybe it is...? in a wealthier, more exclusive part. No, my view, as it has been for over a decade, is of a pub garden which round about April they start to tart up, readying it for the longer, hopefully warmer, evenings and extra traffic.

So, out come the paint pots and paintbrushes, the potted plants and hanging baskets, the bar staff and kitchen hands in their pub chain t-shirts and waist-tied aprons, their chef white tunics and chessboard-like checked trousers and catering clogs. Sometimes the paint pots are abandoned for spray cans, the brush given way to stencilling instead of freehand, so that all I hear for most of that day is shake, shake, rattle, release: pfffffft.

Paint is the favourite medium though for covering over, for making everything look fresh and new. Anything that can be splashed with colour is splashed, sometimes carefully, sometimes liberally, sometimes literally dipped in. The seats and backs of garden chairs, table-tops, cigarette ash-pots (overturned flower pots with saucer), the exterior of storage sheds, and even the fence panels that separate and enclose the area.

Bold blocks. Bold stripes. A vibrant intensity. A grass green. A bright orange. Royal blue, maroon and white stripes with STAFF PARKING etched across them.

Their endeavours futile, their execution of them amusing. All, however, busily painting; concentrating on the task at hand in a slapdash, lackadaisical way. This is a 'no frills' technique, or perhaps this is for them the 'bells and whistles'. Whichever it is, it's art hour for the kids and does little to improve or enhance the attractiveness of this sun-trap with its landing strip of fake turf.

The hanging baskets and potted plants are, however, left untouched-up; the flowers allowed their natural blushes, which I've always assumed are real and which being more delicate clash rather violently with the backdrop to further affront the eye.

Admired from above, chaos, like a Jackson Pollock, reigns.

If I closed my eyes, I might be able to transmogrify it into a Henri Rousseau jungle painting, in spite of the fact that the one below (with eyes open) is obviously humanly-assisted and far less exotic. Its design more modern. More town than country. A jet-washed paved and deck-boarded jungle with bright flashes of colour and leafage, surrounded on all sides by tall and squat residential and commercial properties, which at times is filled with stalking and preyed-upon beasts that do not hold the same fascination as those you might expect to see in an Amazonian jungle. Or even a zoo, for that matter.

Their behaviours are interesting, these beasts that circle round and round or saunter up and up down, congregate at a table or in a corner, in their causal or suited finery; the sounds they make are mostly brays, of one sort or another – in recognition, in rapture, in rage, in-between gulps of the nectar this jungle provides.

A garden party, on a manicured lawn, with maybe one or two marquees and a band, though considered more refined, would be, so I've been informed, much the same, only with possibly a more genteel quality. The gardeners, the fixer-uppers would have been in just as dawn, in her rosy hues, broke across the sky, to prune, to titivate, to erect, to be barked at by the Queen who wants the day to be just as or more perfect than last year's. And they would tremble as they hid the errors that shouldn't have been made but for one reason or another had and then be careless in their attempts to conceal them.

The beasts would mill, the floral dresses would waft, corks would be popped, bottle-tops unscrewed and nectar poured into flutes, as tinkles of laughter, similar to the notes a wind-chime makes, mingle with the calls of birds and rustles of smaller unseen creatures.

Picture credit: Cards Painting the Roses Red, John Tenniel (source: alice-in-wonderland.net)

This post was penned in 2019 (i.e. when pubs and their gardens were open for business.)

Nuts in April, May and June

Sometimes the detail you want comes to you after; there's a delay, short in length yet long enough to be too late. So although now better informed, it cannot be used. It must be squirrelled away for the future; a future that may come or it may not. Even squirrels forget where they've buried nuts or dig another squirrel's up, stuff in their cheeks until they're distended and can then be relocated: to a new burial spot or a hole in a tree (or do they build a nest in the branches, like birds? I'm sure I read that somewhere... Oh, their nest is a 'drey', but in tree branches, could that be right??); but if unable to wait, they sit and nibble at them then and there before a squirrel who thinks these nuts are rightfully theirs comes along and starts a chasing fight and chatters angrily. Squirrels, rivals or friends, reds or greys, seem to like admonishing one another. A good telling-off is a good day. Unless that telling-off is given by a dog, of course.

Information-gathering has many squirrel hallmarks. When you purposely hunt for it, you don't often find it, or you find some other equally interesting related or unrelated bit of trivia; when you forget it, it suddenly arrives, in your lap, so to speak, with very little effort on your part or expenditure of energy.

Both the hunt and the late discovery are irritating, for in the former you can only furnish an article with the sparse detail you have unearthed or know, or forgo that angle altogether; and in the latter, well, it's already been written and revised. For example, it would have helpful to have understood more about the judging process and staging of Greek plays; and that I would feel less troubled by Aristophanes' comic choruses; and that Euripides was, and perhaps is, considered a misogynist, a few weeks back, because now I have no use for that information, and so the pieces published are exactly that: less-informed and less informative.

Why, you might ask, didn't I go back and revise? Simply, or complicatedly, because it would have changed the whole tone, the whole piece.

It's laziness, then? No. It's a principle. I always stand by what I've written, which includes honouring the time and place it's been written in. I didn't know then what I know now. What I subsequently learned would, as it invariably does, have altered my views, my assumptions, which weren't wrong but were formed from another premise entirely, and would therefore destroy 700 words or thereabouts. Somehow, for some unknown reason, that matters to me. Almost as if I'm charting my scholarly progress or assessing my honesty. I didn't think I was doing that, but perhaps I am subconsciously...

See, snippets of unlooked-for information surface all the time and give you something else to ponder...

The information I've presented is not then false, just representative of where I was in my thinking. But have I, then, falsely led the audience I think I'm writing for, like some sort of Pied Piper or Pan figure? Have I spoken in riddles like Beatrix Potter's Squirrel Nutkin? Am I, in fact, doing both?

Well, if I am then I'm leading myself on and confusing myself too.

Yet, like the Piper, I attempt to lure information to me with pipes or a flute; or, like Squirrel Nutkin, taunt an old Master, dead and forgotten or dead and remembered, with riddles and songs until they give in and send pearls of wisdom, sky-downwards or from the underbelly of the world where such masters reside. But because I fail to make the usual offerings (of foodstuffs) and libations the information sometimes comes not at all, or more often in dribs and drabs, or is delayed, so, for example, those I wanted in April I gathered in May, and those I wanted in May are coming now, in June.

Somewhere, a whole island awaits me. Of information called-up by me but uncollected and unused because permission hasn't yet been given to receive it. And other parties, in this time, may have pushed to the front of the queue. My only option, as I see it, is to lure these other interested squirrels away with my rustic flute-playing and find a way to seize all the nuts. 

Picture credit: Squirrel Nutkin, 1903, Beatrix Potter (source: WikiArt)