Airs and Graces, and being stuck for all eternity manoeuvring blunt scissors, even
She wanted to have airs, and the other; she just could never afford them. There were no plastic coverings necessary to hold back the dirt from her sofas, there were no sofas, no Sunday parlour closed off from the children for guests. There was just that one chipped tiled fireplace in the small living-room, and what would have been the parlour was the shop, that beloved ‘Bon-Bon’. So, one desperate mother, one ‘absinthe father’, and five gawping offspring grew up in one tiny living-room, and smaller kitchen.
Then there was that time she had us go out at night, out to that small patch of land, postage-stamp size (luckily), with blunt scissors, and attempt to cut the damp grass, to placate the rent-charging neighbour, Biddy Heffernan, to proffer some evidence of upkeep of the property. Or that other time she had us dye the carpet with bottles of black ink, to hide the stains. Unfortunately, it wasn’t waterproof ink, so trouble ensued, as would be expected, or at least as much as any sane person might expect it to. Even we, the children, understood these domestic administrations to be verging on the unstable. They were somewhat painful to witness, and the coercion needed to get us to collaborate, and execute these masterstrokes, was somewhat damaging to our brutalized sense of childish selves. The desperation was registered, inverted, and absorbed, and left to burgeon into lifelong ‘drivers’ in each of us, taking a different form according to the coping strategies of each child. Even now, as somewhat wizened ‘adults’, the children would sometimes get together and laugh about these mad escapades. There is a sort of tacit agreement that nobody talks of the damage this might have done, these eccentric tasks, but we secretly see it in each other as we laugh uproariously. We even sort of understand each other’s mistakes somewhat, but are also mostly glad when the evening is over so we can forget it all again, and retreat, until the next time. Some of us even fly away to foreign shores to escape these encounters in the hope of avoiding these reveries indefinitely.
Some never fly back.
This is where that story comes from, told by the youngest, of being able to change his own nappy/diaper by the time he was six months old. As Monty Python would have it, “He was lucky, he had a nappy”, or a shoebox, or whatever.
Poverty porn is just that, poverty porn, and we won’t be having room for that, at all (at all). It’s good to be at that point of realisation that every family has its own madness, and universal madness issues from that omnipresent and generous font, that overflowing cornucopia.
The poverty doesn’t really interest him, but that font does, that overflowing. This was not going to be a rags-to-riches redemption story. He was more or less sure that we are the only species that rabbits on mindlessly about ‘universal forgiveness’; this deserved looking at, and vanquishing even. It seemed to him that ‘universal embracing’ made much more sense, that ‘impossible dream’, as mister Brel and his cohorts would warble on about.
Rack had no siblings. She was an only ‘Protestant’ child. Ruin had two brothers, and two sisters, a ‘Catholic’ brood.
Rack envied Ruin, and Ruin envied Rack. Let’s start there.
Whispering Grass, the trees don't have to know.
"Don't you tell it to the breeze 'cause she will tell the birds and bees
And ev'ryone will know because you told the blabbering trees."
Whispering Grass
Song by Doris Fisher / Fred Fisher
"And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out."
Luke 19:40
A friend, Thalia, sent me a photo of some, fully mature, botanists at play. I understand these wonderful adventurers completely. I don't own this photograph. I love that someone is doing this, so I don't have to. Time is short, as they say. I guffaw. I cannot help but wonder what 'Aliens' might make of this, or any of our obsessions for that matter. I wonder would they, the Aliens, be able to distinguish us from all the other sacred cows.
And then there's the idea of dust, both breathing and breeding, making Duchamp (and by extension Man Ray), a part of this unholy trinity of expanding ideas.
Rack: I love the stories of your childhood household. It’s amazing how funny you make destitution. Poverty porn, as you say. When I read it, I want you to take me further indoors to that world. I want to see it all.
Airs and Graces, and being stuck for all eternity manoeuvring blunt scissors, even
She wanted to have airs, and the other; she just could never afford them. There were no plastic coverings necessary to hold back the dirt from her sofas, there were no sofas, no Sunday parlour closed off from the children for guests. There was just that one chipped tiled fireplace in the small living-room, and what would have been the parlour was the shop, that beloved ‘Bon-Bon’. So, one desperate mother, one ‘absinthe father’, and five gawping offspring grew up in one tiny living-room, and smaller kitchen.
Then there was that time she had us go out at night, out to that small patch of land, postage-stamp size (luckily), with blunt scissors, and attempt to cut the damp grass, to placate the rent-charging neighbour, Biddy Heffernan, to proffer some evidence of upkeep of the property. Or that other time she had us dye the carpet with bottles of black ink, to hide the stains. Unfortunately, it wasn’t waterproof ink, so trouble ensued, as would be expected, or at least as much as any sane person might expect it to. Even we, the children, understood these domestic administrations to be verging on the unstable. They were somewhat painful to witness, and the coercion needed to get us to collaborate, and execute these masterstrokes, was somewhat damaging to our brutalized sense of childish selves. The desperation was registered, inverted, and absorbed, and left to burgeon into lifelong ‘drivers’ in each of us, taking a different form according to the coping strategies of each child. Even now, as somewhat wizened ‘adults’, the children would sometimes get together and laugh about these mad escapades. There is a sort of tacit agreement that nobody talks of the damage this might have done, these eccentric tasks, but we secretly see it in each other as we laugh uproariously. We even sort of understand each other’s mistakes somewhat, but are also mostly glad when the evening is over so we can forget it all again, and retreat, until the next time. Some of us even fly away to foreign shores to escape these encounters in the hope of avoiding these reveries indefinitely.
Some never fly back.
This is where that story comes from, told by the youngest, of being able to change his own nappy/diaper by the time he was six months old. As Monty Python would have it, “He was lucky, he had a nappy”, or a shoebox, or whatever.
Poverty porn is just that, poverty porn, and we won’t be having room for that, at all (at all). It’s good to be at that point of realisation that every family has its own madness, and universal madness issues from that omnipresent and generous font, that overflowing cornucopia.
The poverty doesn’t really interest him, but that font does, that overflowing. This was not going to be a rags-to-riches redemption story. He was more or less sure that we are the only species that rabbits on mindlessly about ‘universal forgiveness’; this deserved looking at, and vanquishing even. It seemed to him that ‘universal embracing’ made much more sense, that ‘impossible dream’, as mister Brel and his cohorts would warble on about.
Rack had no siblings. She was an only ‘Protestant’ child. Ruin had two brothers, and two sisters, a ‘Catholic’ brood.
Rack envied Ruin, and Ruin envied Rack. Let’s start there.
Whispering Grass, the trees don't have to know.
"Don't you tell it to the breeze 'cause she will tell the birds and bees
And ev'ryone will know because you told the blabbering trees."
Whispering Grass
Song by Doris Fisher / Fred Fisher
"And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out."
Luke 19:40
A friend, Thalia, sent me a photo of some, fully mature, botanists at play. I understand these wonderful adventurers completely. I don't own this photograph. I love that someone is doing this, so I don't have to. Time is short, as they say. I guffaw. I cannot help but wonder what 'Aliens' might make of this, or any of our obsessions for that matter. I wonder would they, the Aliens, be able to distinguish us from all the other sacred cows.
And then there's the idea of dust, both breathing and breeding, making Duchamp (and by extension Man Ray), a part of this unholy trinity of expanding ideas.
Rack: I love the stories of your childhood household. It’s amazing how funny you make destitution. Poverty porn, as you say. When I read it, I want you to take me further indoors to that world. I want to see it all.