I Saw Orange

I looked down into my shopping basket and quite literally saw orange. Carrots, sweet potato, baked beans, Moroccan houmous in its orange packaging. Waiting in line to pay, I thought of a quip I might say to the cashier, something along the lines of: I must be drawn to orange today, then a chuckle, but as I wasn't on friendly terms with the woman on I thought better of it.

Well, that was partly the reason. The other was because I was partially deaf that day, so I worried that my small, insignificant joke might be lost in a whisper and I'd have to repeat it in a bellow - I really had no idea how loud or soft I was speaking – which might then echo throughout the store like a voice coming through the tannoy system and cause heads to look up. And the quip too, if heard, might not be understood, or be mistook for: oh dear, we've got a right one here, with a tight, humouring smile given. So, I remained silent, ruminating on it in my mind alone, my lips closed and possibly slightly curled. In other words, I amused myself, and maybe stirred other customers to shoot me curious stares.

I dwelt on it for the rest of the day. Orange. Beta-carotene. Vitamin A. Though surely my hands had reached for these items for more aesthetic reasons...liar, because two were on my shopping list. The own brand baked beans were an impulse buy as was the on offer houmous.

Was it an orange day? I was wearing brown: brown top, darker brown cardigan with khaki green trousers with red stripes and a brown belt. Brown is not orange but it's a complementary colour. An earth shade. The palette of autumn, of late sun.

Perhaps I just needed in that instant, the instant of the planned shop, more orange in my life.

Why?

The sun was out; it wasn't cold and grey, but bright and warm. The sun however was nowhere in sight. Somewhere else, I imagine, it could be spotted, red and small, an orange ball. Somewhere, in different, clearer skies, it was an orange in the air, just hanging there, without a tree from which to hang from.

The thought made me hungry, not, however, for oranges; I dislike peeling and eating that fruit – all that pith! - as well as its juice, with bits.

Still I wanted orange and orange I would have.

I snacked on dried apricots; I drank mango juice.

And when the sunlight faded to blue-black, I ate sliced carrot, raw and cooked; I ate sweet potato, diced, in a three-bean soup.

Did I need more sweetness to balance out my bitterness, was that it? Was I sour, inside? Without knowing it, was that possible?

Or were my eyes just attracted to the colour? The colour of cheerfulness, of sunshine and the south. Birds fly south, before Winter comes, should I? Turn my face to the sun like sunflowers do. Lift up my head to its orange face and yellow petals of light. Watch it rise; see it dip. Bask. Bask in its warmth.

Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. All year round.

Sun, summer; orange, autumn. Orange in autumn to compensate for the fading light; the dying sun. Carrots, squash, pumpkin. Sweet potatoes.

Why is the sun never compared to a peach? And if the sun is likened to an orange then what is the moon? A round melon; a golden apple; a blue cheese, French, of course. In shadow, a lemon segment waiting to be squeezed. A Cheshire cat grinning. A cat on the moon.

Why does it always have to be food? As if we could stretch out a hand and pluck it from the sky, like Adam and Eve did of the Tree. We've eaten of the sun, the moon; the world goes dark. Yet our appetites, our cravings continue unabated. Our days and nights unilluminated. For the Heavens have a hole, an unrepairable hole, in them. The oranges, the melons, the apples, the lemons consumed. Totally.

The future black; drained, bleached of orange. Oranges are a bitter fruit.

I saw orange. 

Picture credit: Redheaded Woman and Sunflowers, 1890, Paul Gauguin (source: WikiArt).

This post was written in 2019.

Two Sisters

'Lodger Wanted' said the sign in the doll house window, and then underneath in smaller lettering, 'Please apply within', then under that in brackets 'knock on the roof.'

What kind of lodger was wanted though? Miss Frill hadn't decided that. She wouldn't, she thought, be very particular, as long as they were neat and quiet, and didn't want too much 'doing' for them. And if it worked out she might try it for real: invite a stranger to live with her. But would it be respectable?

Would it, Jo, would it? She muttered, directing her gaze to the ceiling, where her dead sister she assumed, watched and listened, for this section of the ceiling was once her sister's bedroom floor, and so since her death she had communed with it. When Jo was sick, like their dear papa before, she used to thump on it with a stick she kept expressly for that purpose by the side of the bed, one for yes, two for no, three for tea, and continuously if Violet was making too much noise downstairs.

Now however only silence reigned. No answer came.

There was no Violet and Josephine; Jo and Vi. The Misses Frill. Even Cook had gone, and had taken her niece, the maid, with her. Economies! Jo had cried when they left after Papa died, We must make economies. Jo had cut the household budget and Cook hadn't been happy. They'd argued over the butter, over the marmalade and occasionally even over the breakfast table where these items were laid out. It was awful; Violet still shuddered at the remembrance.

Jo wasn't an easy person to live with (or live without), but she was Violet's only sister, the younger too, yet headstrong and confident from an early age. When she was little, she had these incredible tantrums: her face went quite red, her tiny foot stamped and the curls on her head bounced with the motion. Yes, Jo knew what she wanted and she always went out to get it; Vi sat in, stood in, walked in her shadow. Jo could make all the decisions. Jo would know what to do. And Papa would approve. Jo would run the household.

And that's how it was, for a long time. Then Papa grew old and died, then Cook left, then Jo took to her bed and gave her commands from there. The butter must be kept on a dish in the icebox, her special health bread on its own shelf - the bread and the shelf reserved for her only, the tea must be served on a certain tray and milk must be poured in the cup first, and the knives, forks, spoons, bowls and plates she liked to use must be kept separate, and Vi must not sit in any of her chairs or on her side of the couch.

Sometimes in the afternoons, Jo would make Vi bring their old doll house to her bedroom so Vi could practise what was now expected of her. They even practised going to the stores, which is where Violet saw for perhaps the first time vacancy signs: Rooms To Let; Waitress Wanted, Apply Within etc., because like a child instructed not to dawdle, to go there and come straight back, she of course did the opposite. There were fearful rows when she took too long though. And an item from the doll house would be confiscated, for weeks or months, which she'd secretly substitute with those she'd make from cigarette boxes. Their papa had smoked.

Violet wasn't a child though, or child-like, at least not in appearance and only a little in manner; the child was just easier to play. Decisions were made and life happened. On its own. Without her input. And everybody stayed happy, except when she did something she shouldn't.

But now she was alone. The doll house her only companion and teacher. She was free to make as much noise as she wanted and she couldn't. She hadn't the heart to. Did she know how to? That was the question she repeatedly asked herself, and of Jo, too. She still went to bed at 8.30pm, she still kept to her side of the pantry. She was too old to start living, real living, wasn't she?

A lodger...could she? Why not advertise for a woman? Violet crossed through: Please apply within and replaced it with: Women Only Need Apply. There, she said to Jo in the ceiling, I've found the solution.

With unintentional echoes of Katherine Mansfield and Christopher Isherwood's Down There on a Visit.

Picture credit: Two Sisters on a Couch, 1869, Berthe Morisot.

I, The Ghost

The author lays out the house. The reader is asked to visualise it: see it though their eyes and the eyes of their characters. This is where the action will take place; this is where the characters will return, singularly or together. The house is important. In solid fact and in memory. It doesn't have to be still standing, it doesn't have to be still lived in, it doesn't have to be inhabited by the narrator or anyone from the family, for what it once was and what it meant will always exist. Its rooms will remain as they were, as will its outside, in spite of any changes, any modernisation. If there was a Blue Room, it will always be the Blue Room, even if painted white or yellow, or papered with roses. The house remembers. As does its owners. Secrets concealed by the old; secrets revealed to the new, years later.

The house sets the scene, it steals the scene, it keeps time; time past, time instant, time to come. The house is the centre round which everyone else and everything else revolves; the house is the plot. The kitchen is the heart, the house itself is the brain.

The house contains and retains all the events that unfold. The everyday meals, the everyday chores, the celebrations, the catastrophes. Its walls record words, its floors, footsteps. The slam of doors echo long after the fact of being slammed or blown shut. The same stair always creaks in the same spot. A dog's paws make the same tap, tap, tap, tap on the kitchen lino; his tongue makes the same lap, lap, lap as he drinks from a bowl; the bowl scrapes. No sound is ever lost in a house. It's there, right there, waiting to be heard: can you hear it?

The house is a vessel; the house is its own person. The house doesn't forget: anything or anyone.

And we don't forget those that are special to us or those that have for some other reason become fixed, in time and place, in memory. We don't forget what they looked like, what they felt like, where they were, who lived next door. Nor how light filled the rooms; views, windows. Chimneys and roofs and sky; birds and trees and green pleasant country. Nor what rooms contained. Furniture, mirrors, pictures. Things and more things. Odds and ends.

Imagination tricks, but in it there's truth, the fullness of which might be restored the more you think back, the more you call up that house. The house never left – you left it; the house never died. You can visit whenever you like, if that is your wish.

Houses I don't know, though, I struggle to believe in. Completely, utterly with my very being. They might exist, but they don't exist to me, in me. The author instructs, provides detail, sometimes too much, but still I find I can't enter. I knock but the door isn't opened; the windows, curtains closed, are shut to me. My mind, too, shuts down. Words about this house are just words. Words I read but don't gather to my breast. I semi-comprehend, this is where such a character is, this is where this takes place, but don't ask me to tell you where this room is in relation to others or what it contains, or how, if I was there, I would get from here to the dining room, to the lounge. But seeing as I haven't in this instance been let in I don't have to worry; I merely follow with eyes only. Left to right; left to right.

Even on occasions when I've somehow managed to slip in I suffer the same confusion: a guest lost and left to her own devices in an unknown house, although where everything is has already been patiently and rather elaborately explained. Where was I told this passage led? If I go through here will I come out into the garden? What's this room? The author said, the author said... I have nothing. I retrace my steps, and now I'm not only lost, but I've lost where I was, where I had travelled to. And so, as before, to avoid this ground-hog scenario I just read. Left to right; left to right, without any real sense of place.

The house built; the mind won't construct it. The house spoken of; the mind escapes. I'm not in this house, I'm in another house entirely. A house I know. A house I've lived in, stayed in, wandered around. A house I can enter at will, at random. Its doors and windows are always open to me; its rooms are always filled with light. The furniture I knew is still there, waiting for my visit. Everything is just the same, though the house itself is empty; emptied of people. I, the ghost, exploring its abandoned rooms. 

Picture credit: Interior with a table, 1921, Vanessa Bell (source: WikiArt).

This post was written in 2019.

Table in the Forest of Humans

My social skills leave a lot to be desired. I eat nicely, well, I try, but some things just aren't meant to be tidily ate; I sip drinks politely, I try not to gulp or splutter; but my eyes if they're not on the plate or the teacup won't be on you, they will be looking over your shoulder, and sorry, too, but my mind won't be giving you its undivided attention.

How rude! Yes, but it's best to be honest about these things.

Things, such as unspoken rules. And the breaking of them. In public.

Mind you, those I break seem slight compared to those I've seen broken. And I don't break them deliberately, consciously; my focus – gaze and concentration – splits, drifts away. Three-quarters on whomever I'm with, one-quarter fixed on those around us. Human behaviour is so interesting! Where the rules I hold aren't held by these.

So if I'm appearing to be impolite I don't mean to be. Public places are like zoos to me.

And it takes a lot of will to direct my gaze back to you fully. I may not be able to avoid commenting on something I've seen either, although I will of course apologise for the interruption.

On occasion I have tried to seat or position myself where I won't be distracted but that just makes me fidgety and uncomfortable, like I have an itch I can't scratch or am in desperate need of the lavatory, and that I think is worse, for it poses a question: when can I leave? Or chants: out, out, out! Out of here! And not only that, it suggests boredom, too. That is not the impression I wish to give, for although there might be a smidgeon of truth in it it's not true. I am interested. I am engaged. It's just my eyes and mind need something other, other than the persons I'm with, to work upon. They need background life, not a wall, a pillar or a plant.

I wonder that I don't take myself out and just sit. But doing that is somehow self-conscious making. I then feel as if I might be watched and I grow more and more awkward as that feeling increases. I fiddle with my clothing, I rummage in my handbag, I study something, a piece of paper, my hand. I cannot eat or drink in an open space, designed for that purpose, alone. Could I sit in the dark, in the cinema? I don't know. At home those concerns don't exist; they melt away.

Has my own compulsion made me this way?

I can't resist the impulse to observe but to be, to feel myself, observed unnerves me. Have I made myself so sensitive to these tendrils of observation that I'm aware of it where others aren't?

Observation, like any study, raises questions. For the examiner and the subject. The two cannot be divorced. Animal examines man; man examines animal. Animal examines animal; man examines man. Animal and man examine the world: all the objects they see and sense in it. It's what makes us so similar.

So, at home, unexamined and not examining, I scratch my head, I stroke my leg, I push my glasses back up my nose to rest on its bridge; I sit at ease, unconscious of self, whereas at a table in the forest of humans I know the observer is also being observed. A woman adjacent just flicked her eyes over me; the man standing behind the deli counter with a smile plastered on his face did the same an instant ago. Both knew I knew; both knew I saw. For I am forensic-like. I miss nothing.

I don't miss the mother, her arms round a child of two or three on her knee, smashing, smashing with a fork a jacket potato; the father, at a different table, feeding his baby, licking the underside of the spoon before propelling it towards his son's gaping mouth; and that same father then demolishing a substantial plate of food: shovel and swallow, shovel and swallow. Finished, he looks at his wife with a hopeful dog-like expression: more? but she is not in accord with him. She's still picking and chewing, picking and chewing with an expression of disgust, almost of horror. Her face registering every mouthful; his stomach nothing. He hunts.

I need no binoculars; no land vehicle, to follow at a safe distance; no bushes or trees to further camouflage me; no specialist equipment at all. Just plain sight.

Picture credit: Garden Restaurant, 1912, August Macke (source: WikiArt).

This post was penned in 2019.

No Ordinary Sofa

The coffee-coloured Chesterfield sat under a window, facing inwards, with its back against a white wall. A position that to the home-maker's consternation marked the paintwork, but the other alternative was to leave a gap, which was then just big enough for creatures i.e. cats to squeeze through and scratch to their heart's content, with their owners, should they be out of the house, being none the wiser until they later came to pull across the large flowered curtains in order to block the light or shut out the dark.

Oh, the bad-tempered exclamations over the damage done by claws! If those blasted cats hadn't attacked the back, because precautions had been taken, then they'd scratched the arms! The lovely curved, though rather bulbous, arms that characterises a Chesterfield.

And if it wasn't cats, then a dog, a cheeky tan Staffordshire Bull terrier, might have a go, by throwing himself at and on it. A red rocket had launched himself because he so wanted to see what was going on outside. If one of the windows was open he'd balance his back legs on the buttoned-back of the Chesterfield and his front paws on the window ledge and poke his head through the opening to breathe in the fresh air and take in the world, enthusiastically grinning at passers-by or frowning should the Master's car still not be on the drive. Even if the window was shut this was a favoured spot – the nosy dog! - which unlike the cats he was allowed to get away with. The Master maintaining dog's claws are different; cats' are vicious. Though eventually a pale orange throw was employed.

The Chesterfield must, on all counts, be protected from mouths and hooks; and that included human ones, too, that might produce crumbs or leave stains.

A statement piece, a coveted design, a collectible item, an aspirational model. I have arrived. A Chesterfield says Class. To which one is aspiring to belong or to which one has just joined. It's a signal to those that visit: we are one of you; or you are not one of us.

It's never just a sofa.

And so should not be referred to as such.

Or used in quite the same manner a sofa would be.

An artist's muse might, for artistic purposes, recline upon it, but not so the average human sitter; they should, however, sit as if arranged for a portrait: a casual but not too casual pose must be struck. Nobody should appear too familiar with a Chesterfield, even if its seats prove comfortable, very comfortable. Teenagers should not fold themselves over the arms or sit precariously on the arms, or fold their legs under them whilst sitting on it. That type of behaviour is reserved for the green one, at the farther end of the room, which is not the Chesterfield and can be called the sofa.

The Chesterfield deserves Respect.

But this is hard to do if it has been introduced into a home. A home where tea is taken in mugs and biscuits are dunked, and cheese and crackers have a tendency to crumble and fall, in bits, from hands. And of course, where there are animals, who for some reason are attracted to its shape and flat-white coffee tones. Like a magnet it attracts humans and animals, of all dubious qualities and characters, who might not know the correct way to treat a Chesterfield.

The S-word should never, for instance, be uttered in front of it, so if 'Chesterfield' offends it should be called the thing or that thing in front of the window. Even to say the S-word aloud when not in its presence is an offence. It upsets the firmly established 'drawing-room culture' even if this is no longer in existence, since the Chesterfield was once a part of it, and there it remains, in people's minds and hearts.

Acquire a Chesterfield and that 'drawing-room' attitude will slowly pervade into the home, regardless of where it is in the house, which room it's put in.

And so a more functional two or three-seater will also be needed, on which cats can perch and dogs can clamber and adults and teenagers can slouch. A model that, in short, matters less and can therefore be used as intended and abused a little.

For the Chesterfield is no ordinary sofa. 

Picture credit: Girl on a Green Sofa with a Cat, 1910, Max Pechstein (source: WikiArt).

 

Note for readers: see All the Conspirators, Christopher Isherwood p.99-101 Vintage Classics.

This post was penned in 2019.