Synchronicity, etc.

I was in the habit of drinking my morning coffee from a very attractive René (Rennie?) Mackintosh rose-style china mug, (9^th one down, Blue Kintyre) which, like so much in my kitchen, was a present from my sister. The word "Evasé" comes to mind, curving outwards to be wider at the top, giving a larger surface for the hot liquid to cool, reminiscent of the way champagne glasses used to be before it was discovered that the bubbles burst faster.
I needed clothes pegs. I went to the local ironmongers, which is the biggest store in the village. Outside urban centres people need to be able to fix things and do things themselves, I suppose. They only had plastic ones. As I head for the exit, I catch sight of an attractive china mug with roses on it. I pick it up and stand in line to pay for it, a voice in my head saying “clothes pegs. You need clothes pegs. You do not even remotely need another china mug. What are you doing?" But the instinct won and I paid for it and took it home.
The next morning I poured my hot drink into my trusty mackintosh bone china mug and it cracked open and fell apart. I had its replacement right there, waiting to be put to use.
I was totally awestruck. If only, thought I. If only life could be like that more often…

The Double bind
On Christmas day, a son receives a gift from his mother of two neckties; one red, one green. Invited to his mother's house for boxing day dinner, he wears the red tie. She greets him with “what’s wrong with the green tie I gave you, don’t you like it?”.
The only way he could have avoided this particular reaction would have been to wear both ties at once, making himself look effectively crazy.
Laing’s most famous patient was Mary Barnes, who painted this (detail):

[...] for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

Sara just sent me an article in the Guardian arts blog that has links to Gormley and Goldsworthy. I will put it in the side bar eventually, when I have time to work out how to do it. And I will work out how to create links between words inside the blog.

When I posted "the ties that bind" I searched long and hard for a Philip Larkin poem I remembered about a bow tie walking down the street. I couldn’t find it, but found this be the verse.

Strange I never noticed him in Stevie Smith before:-

Not waving but drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

I'm off on holiday on Saturday, two weeks in a boat, two weeks in the great outdoors, far from blinking screens. I'll miss you.

The ties that bind

In Kawabata’s The Sound of the Mountain, the main protagonist has a ‘senior moment’. As an office worker, he has been tying his necktie every day for years. One day he suddenly can’t remember how to do the knot.

In Boris Vian’s L’écume des jours, there is a lengthy description of a pre-nuptial bow-tying difficulty which ends with the would-be knot maker being bitten by the tie.

In the film Hotel Rwanda the main protagonist, having witnessed some particularly barbaric sights, finds himself in a similar situation; he momentarily can’t tie his tie.

Fascinated by this image, I woke up this morning with a clear picture of myself with a knotted tie just under my chin. Nothing else, just my face and the knot. Although the tie in the dream was not the right colour, it reminded me that I used to wear a tie to school, so long ago that it feels like another life.