#510 The Emergence

 
"Put it into perspective," the
fado singer says as the white
bird wheels away & takes
the daytime with it. "Except
for the stars, the sky will be 
empty now for several hours; 
& though having a supposed 
symbol of hope around might 
at first seem comforting, grief 
is best left to emerge when one
is in the open or beside the sea. 
Clean, simple. No melodrama."

#509 La Porte Ouverte

The painter, flushed with
pride from the achievement
of turning Venus de Milo in
to flesh before he posed her

in a meadow, finally recog-
nizes his hubris when the
shadow that has started
following him everywhere

makes him aware that any
statue can stand still for
long enough to have a beard
& mustache painted on them.

#508 The Childhood of Icarus

We lived in a house full of
models for, & details from,

paintings. Inside & out. My
father showed me how to

use the wings he built by
teaching me how to ride a

a horse & wield a whip. 
Everything so large when I

was young, save for the Sun
which seemed so far away.

#507 The Taste of the Invisible

Has he taken a bite from
the side of the apple we
cannot see? Is that what
he is tasting? Or is there 
an additional something — 
let's say a piece of butter-
scotch to give it a whisker
of substance — hidden in

behind that apple, another 
entity which will be either 
visible or invisible depend-
ing on the side of the apple 
the observer finds themself 
at a particular point in time?


"Here we have the apparent visible, the apple, 
hiding the hidden visible, the person’s face." R.M.

#506 Of Limbs & Luxury

Today the post- woman brought me an already ex- pensive castle in the Pyrenees. If I had added the optional extra of that giant bird found in some Magritte paintings it would have cost me an arm & a leg on top of a basic price I can't really afford. & since Ma- gritte is dead, I don't trust the vendor's guarantee that the artist will paint any missing limbs back on me, just like he did to the model in Attemp- ting the Impossible.

#505 Le Présent

It appears as if birds
with ancient lineages

find it difficult to deal
with the present on 

its own terms unless 
they have some well- 

worn article from the 
past to comfort them.

#504 La Belle Lurette

The bilboquet is monocular, a
cyclops in an uninhabited land-
scape whose presence does not

change the land around even if 
it does add some life to its sur-
rounds, even if the addition of


a cloak brings more humanity.
Elsewhere, the ruined watch-
tower is in the act of changing, 

those roots insinuating a future 
tree, even if il y a belle lurette, even
if that started a long time ago.

  

#503 Jeunesse

From Amazon in Belgium 
I can order this as a "Canvas 
Wall Art Print for Living Room 
Home Decor Ready to Hang
(90 x 117 cm (31.5 x 46.1 in)), 
Framed" for just €191.26. I 
think of buying it, to see if 
it does for me what another 
portrait did for Dorian Gray. 

But then, but then. At 81 
it's probably too late to weave 
any magic it might have had 
on me, even though the web-
site says it's a great gift idea 
for Valentine's Day which 
just happens to be today. 
What finally turns me away 
is a sudden vision of the 

aging process occuring — 
since we have no attic — in 
the back garden shed, the 
teeth at first, then the lungs, 
the hearing, the knees. It's 
not the actual deterioration, 
rather the caveat from the 
vendor: that spare parts are 
not available nor provided.

#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.