#502 La Bonne Foi (2)

For once the tie's knot
fills the collar. The pipe,

more merlot than the 
indian red of the tie, 

still manages — through 
the medium of the lips — 

to blend in with it. It's 
taken sixty or so years;

but the man's finally 
got some dress sense.

#501 Memory of a Journey

Without the feather, the tower
would fall down. Without the

tower, the building blocks of
the universe would have no-

thing to hold them in place. 
Without the building blocks of

the universe, Magritte would not
exist. Without Magritte, the invis-

ible would never be rendered 
visible & we would never know

what direction we should follow. 

#500 L'Ovation

 
Begin with the bowler hat. It
doesn't have the ebullience
displayed by Astaire in his
rendition of that Irving Berlin
song but can be relied upon 
to fill its allotted rôle with
some semblance of style. Re-
ceives an appropriate round
of applause. 
                       Then come the 
birds. Brought on early be-
cause they're flighty & might
take off at any moment. (Save
for that eagle in a stony pose
somewhere in the Pyrenees.)

The bit players follow — weight-
lifters, lions, fish, rocks floating
in space, dogs, lost jockeys, the
odd unicorn. Elsewhere invisible,
but here most definitely on show.

Now the cloud chorus steps for-
ward to take their bow, bringing
with them one of the many scenes
in which they appear. This one
repeated often, with different 
colors & different media, usually
with a different name, La Joconde,
the happy one, the Mona Lisa.

Which is a hint of what's to follow.
Tension builds as we wait for the 
muse. So many aspects & images 
of her life depicted across so many 
years & now awaiting her final
curtain call. Georgette, sine qua non.

#499 The Organs of the Night

This time the jockey isn't lost, 
just perplexed to find a set 
of wellworn curtains standing
upright on the sand. As is the 
horse, paused midstep in its 
littoral dressage routine. All 
up an unexpected tableau, made
more complex by the fact the

sun seems to be falling rather
than setting. Loss of gravity; &
everything is red-cast as the 
human condition deteriorates. 
Organ failure ensues. Night will 
not see the light of day again.

#498 La Gâcheuse

Strange to find such an image in 
a book on healing; but Magritte's
purloining of the anatomical 
illustration lacks the layering that
Dr. F.E. Bilz included, where the
face could be folded back to dis-
play a skull, & the internal organs
similarly displayed by a slight
manipulation of the body. None
of that shown here. Instead—dare
we say it?—a combination of
bare bones & bare breasts to offer 
up a simulacrum of age & youth
conjoined. Though left intact upon
the head some residual skin, a re- 
minder that memento mori might
sometimes come back to bite us.  

#497 Seasickness

I am bemused that the 1950s 
saccharine pop song A White 
Sport Coat & A Pink Carnation 
that resides somewhere in 
that ‘songs you grew up with’ 
drawer jumps immediately to 
mind. & yet what else comes 
close to a gaudy sport coat & 
a cut of ham laid out to fester 
beneath a burning sun. They
both provoke a nauseous re-
action, one intentional, the
other not. As Magritte says,
we “live in a very unpleasant 
world … that’s why my 
painting is a battle, or rather a 
counteroffensive.” So, no need 
to be all at sea even though 
the sea is nowhere to be seen.

#496 The Pilgrim

Decide on what faces 
to take along. Set out 
on the road to Zion 

or Mecca or Ayodhya 
or Lumbini. Which one 
you choose will depend 

on the face you have 
chosen for the day. 
Wear a clean shirt & 

a new tie — they will
be accepted everywhere. 
The best excuse to offer

for the hat is the old sun-
in-the-eyes routine. That
seems to work most places.

#495 Melmoth

I sold my soul for
150 extra years of
life; but after filling
much of that time
with a variety of

troubled wanderings,
this is where I end up —
riding a road bike tot-
ally unsuited to the
barren mountain trails

I’m fated to finish my
years trapped upon, &
all the while looking so
ridiculous that even the
owls seem sorry for me.

#494 Le Monde Familier

Place the bell, le grelot, firmly
on the ground. No need to
anchor it — unlike the artist’s 
elsewhere use of it, this time 
it does not float. A solid
reality keeps it where it is

intended to be. Then lower
the horizon & not only bring 
the cloud down with it but
also shift it forward so it seems 
out of place but perfectly posit-
ioned above the bell. Now, to 

ensure it doesn’t float away, 
flatten the sky behind & call
upon that peripatetic rock to
actually do something, anchor
the column from above, act 
as a counterweight to entropy. 

#493 The Lost Jockey (1948)

The surface of the Earth is
covered with overlapping
racetracks. Take the wrong
turn, & a jockey is likely to

find themselves in unfamiliar
surroundings, sometimes not
even on the continent they
started off on. & often lost from

sight, until a convenient cave
opening allows the invisible
to regain some visibility, even
if in a parched & foreign land.

#492 The State of Grace

What people see is the title,
not the subject. & the subject
contradicts the title. “I was
inspired,” said Magritte. “The 
subject to be painted: a bicycle 
on a cigar.” Or to put it even
more bluntly, a bicycle riding
roughshod over another object —
no state of grace in that. Ex-
cept . . .The objects float, & 
perhaps a belief hovers that 
the laws of gravity are defied 
when things are in a state of 
grace. Which brings in Simone 
Weill, who wrote: “All the 
natural movements of the soul 
are controlled by laws analogous 
to those of physical gravity. 
Grace is the only exception.” 
‘Analogous to’ is the escape 
clause that allows St. Thomas 
Aquinas to come on board &
point out that grace builds
upon, not contradicts, nature.
Then, once all parties are on
stage, lined up like ten pins 
in a state of grace, Magritte 
reappears, wearing his bowl-
er hat, & with a solid verbal 
cast, scatters the skittles
with his addendum: “A bike
sometimes runs over a cigar
down in the street.” No
gravity, no grace inherent.