November 30th

the glitter of frost

smothers the morning hurry

secret warmth returns

 

When it’s just above freezing, but the sun makes you feel warm? That!

November 29th

eastern horizon

lazy sun clambers into

a bright winter sky

November 28th

belligerent crow

beleaguered red kite drifting

carrion pleasures

I watched a crow harangue a Red Kite today. It was seeing it off. Maybe they’d both spotted something to eat. Who knows.

November 27th

a stack of gulls climb

shoot through grey rain ready skies

puncturing the clouds

November 26th

small steps to the edge

of the waterlogged moorland

where the horses graze

November 25th

 

chatter and whistles

starlings gossip on the line

animated dusk

The vocal range of starlings is pretty impressive. There were four whooping and whistling and chattering to one another. Their mimicry is impressive, they can even copy people’s speech with enough exposure. You can youtube examples of this, but be warned, their voices are proper horror film evil sounding.

November 24th

Degenerate art

a procession of mourners

pay their last respects

I was reading about “Degenerate Art” today, the label applied by the Nazi’s to any art which didn’t fit their ideals on realism, classically influenced art or promotion of the Reich. This meant that most modern art would be labelled degenerate, including art by such eminent German artists as Max Ernst and Otto Dix (both first world war veterans). Artists fled Germany, were prevented from working, or were in extreme cases, executed like poor Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, through forced euthanasia.

The Nazi’s put on a show of Degenerate Art with dismissive labels, to instruct the populace as to why the works were degenerate. As this BBC article states.

An exhibition of confiscated works titled Entartete Kunst, which took place in Munich in July 1937, was advertised as "culture documents of the decadent work of Bolsheviks and Jews".

When I was on a Munich walking tour some years ago, the guide said that the Degenerate exhibition had several times the number of visitors as the officially endorsed Nazi art gallery next door. It seems the German people were not all taken in by this propaganda and were (privately) curious to make up their own minds.

Many art works were sold, many were destroyed.

Hitler himself was a frustrated artist, before taking up politics, he led a life of someone he would have labelled “degenerate” once he’d got into power. He painted detailed architecture and landscapes, his work was fairly boring it seems, lacking in emotion. Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler’s predecessor as Chancellor, one of the military and political heavyweights of the early part of the 20th century called him the “Bohemian Corporal”, due to his failure at becoming an artist and his low rank during World War 1.

It’s interesting to compare Hitler’s work (of which only a few examples of survive or are attributable to him) with Churchill, another keen painter. Churchill, suffering depression, his “black dog” for most of his life, saw art as a way of release, of coping, of coming to terms with the darkness. His book, “Painting as a Pastime” is a treat (D has a copy which is wonderful). You can feel that in his work, which although quite naive, is expressive.

Hitler, you can imagine, with his dedication to detail and buildings seemed emasculated and stifled by his inability to express.

Above: The Courtyard of the Old Residency in Munich (Adolf Hitler, 1913, Watercolour)

Sunset Over The Atlas Mountains (Winston Churchill, 1935).

November 23rd

 

the tap of metal

on porcelain waiting for

my love to wake up

November 22nd

 

Dark and beautiful

the trees twinkle with the pale

glow of Christmas lights

photo © Mel Melis

November 21st

 

rose glow of comfort

caress the saturated

peat drunk on rainfall

November 20th

the bickering gulls

driven inland by cold coasts 

scream at each other

There are more gulls around this time of year, Bedfordshire is far from the coast, they come inland, more food, more fields, more pickings. I’m not sure if it’s more temperate, but perhaps it’s less blustery and bearable for them. They do make noise when they’re excited!

It’s mostly black headed gulls (who actually have white heads this time of year as it’s outside of breeding season), but you get the occasional herring gull too, slightly bigger, with the red spot on the beak which their young use as a target to peck at to get some more delicious regurgitated food.

Black headed gull (top) and Herring Gull illustrations from RSPB website.

November 19th

 

feline, fox and crow

prowled around the hidden nest

veiled by summer leaves

The tree opposite has revealed a nest after shedding its leaves. I’d like to think whatever bird built it managed to rear their young successfully, the local hunters oblivious to the morsels growing up behind the leaves. But in all likelihood the nest got invaded as it’s right on the lane, cats being the biggest threat. You never know though!

November 18th

 

inactivity

lazy whispers mind confined

the sloth devil grins

November 17th

Memento mori
the vanity of excess
and the peace of death

What an incredible exhibition Death: A Self Portrait at the Wellcome Collection is. I’m going to visit again as it’s quite a sensory overload. It’s a celebration of death, it’s not at all morbid in my mind. Some of it is sad and tragic of course but on the whole it’s about attitudes to life and our inevitable death, how we cope and the celebration of life.

One of the exhibits - “Death the Friend” by Alfred Rethel (wood engraving 1851). This is quite a compassionate piece. The old bellringer has died. Death waits till dawn and rings the bell on his behalf, paying respect to the fact that the bellringer has to some degree, been working for him all his life.

November 16th

from Poseidon’s purse

they drag the big eyed harvest

gasping on hot wharfs

the omniscient

God so fickle and angry

buries them with waves

I popped into the British Museum, I haven’t been there in years, it is an astonishing place, putting aside the dubious origins of how some of the antiquities ended up there, it is a magnificent collection.

This mosaic (Roman, approx 100AD) really caught my eye. The pieces of stone were so tiny, it allowed for fantastic detail. N.b – I know I use the Greek “Poseidon” as opposed to “Neptune”, but I prefer using the Greek names

November 15th

patient jackdaws roost

stewed fog brew settles heavy

on the muddy moors

the treacle trickle

faint sounds of the river Flit

meandering on

I’m glad I didn’t have to commute anywhere today, the fog was thick and miserable.

November 14th

 

pocket full of crumbs

oat cakes for the hissing swan

but he’s left the pond

Felt quite sad that the Swan has gone away. Left our pond. I guess it was rather small for him (or her).

November 13th

 

hungry wide pupils

throat barbs ploughed, antagonised

restless, sapped of sleep

I believe it is a bit of a no-no to punctuate Haikus. You’ll have to let me off. I’m ill. Got a raging sore throat. Didn’t get much sleep.

November 12th

 

an eye blinks turquoise

from the fisherman’s drag net

the dancing satyr

I went to the Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy. I’ve been to a lot of the big hitting exhibitions this year and Bronze is right up there. There were so many pieces covering 6000 years of history, unsettling old pagan pieces, pre-classical from northern Europe, of unknown function, all the way to the modern day where Bourgeois (one of her wonderful spiders seemingly skids across a wall), Moore and Matisse amongst others, were represented. The exhibition paid respect to both Asian and African artefacts too, the Nigerian pieces were astonishingly beautiful.

Perseus and Medusa (a copy of Cellini’s original) was also imposing, him holding aloft her serpent head, with serpents seemingly also spilling from her headless neck as he stands triumphant over her fallen corpse.

But my favourite piece, was the first piece, which get’s a room of its own as you enter the exhibition. The Dancing Satyr, a Greek classical piece pulled from a fisherman’s net off the coast of Sicily, fairly recently (1998). He’s incomplete, the leg he balanced on, both arms, part of the head and his tail are all missing, but this does not diminish him. The powerful realism really struck me, the definition of the muscles in movement of something beyond human, the detail in the face and hair. It was quite astonishing really.

It’s a great exhibition. Well worth going to!

Photo from the Royal Academy Website

November 11th

 

when the sun breaks through

to kiss your flayed skin you dance

dead eaves exalted

 

the pilgrimage tree

shimmers in gold leaf litter

slowly falls apart

 

There is an old dead tree in the woods near us. It sustains so much life. We’ve watched it slowly fall apart over ten years.

We feel quite attached to it. Photo I took below ( © Mel Melis)

November 10th

spark frazzled old dust

the beast labours underground

through plague pits and sin

 

What do the tube tunnels cut through? What sinister secrets does London have buried under her?

November 9th

pockets of forest

cavern pools and ocean depths

survivors linger

Sir David Attenborough picked 10 animals to save on his “Ark” as part of a new programme celebrating his incredible 60 years in (BBC) broadcasting. I admire him greatly.

From the scaly Pangolin, to Darwin’s Frog where the male gives “birth” to the young and the wonderful Sumatran Rhino to name just three, he passionately delivers a case for each animal under threat. Bit of a mean premise for the show though, asking him to choose, as I’m sure he would prepare a defence to save the many thousands of species who are at severe threat of extinction due to eco-system destruction or hunting. It’s a wonderful programme though, as it always is when Sir David is involved.

Photo from the BBC website.

November 8th

the murderous pulse

folded vision, stabs of light

darkness the healer

November 7th

pumpkin army strewn

the rot of grinning faces

compost casualties

A week after Halloween, you still see the occasional pumpkin face, toothy grinned with empty sockets, discarded, peering at you from a grass verge or smashed in a border.

November 6th

 

the first frost melted

in the rising cocksure sun

whilst I slumbered on

a cherub asleep

in the blackout sanctity

of my feather bed

November 5th

 

broken necked clothmen

paraded, stuffed with paper

tonight they will die

murder bonfires made

pushed in prams, propped on trollies

penny for the Guy

As a kid I thought it kind of sinister that other kids made effigies of a man who was to be executed through fire. Dragging him through the streets asking for money, his disturbing strawman bloated body, stuffed with paper and old cloth, filling out a pair of grubby old discarded trousers and threadbare jumper. He didn’t have hands and feet, just stumps tied with string, to stop his innards from spilling outwards. His head was a sackcloth bag, with a crude face painted on. It was fairly hideous. And he was normally smiling, you wouldn’t expect a condemned man to be smiling. This was a man we were going to plant on top of a bonfire and burn to death. Smiling would be last thing he’d be doing. We pushed this abomination along on an old trolley or in a pram. “Penny for the guy” kids used to shout. “Here’s a shilling, now fuck off and get that evil looking thing away from me!”. I never made one myself, but sometimes I used to tag along with some of the other kids in north London, I never kept the money for myself as it wasn’t my Guy, I was just grateful to be part of this disturbing ritual.

Now that this tradition has all but disappeared, I kind of miss it, it’s an interesting part of social history. Barbaric if thought of in isolation, but in historical context, fascinating. I want to burn effigies of people on a bonfire

As for fireworks, I’ve never been fussed about them. I read too much into them. The nihilism of their pointless lives extinguished so soon! Also I associate fireworks with feeling sad. When you’re a kid, you want what other kids have and so I wanted fireworks too, but I never asked for them. Our family were hard working, working all hours. Fireworks (like bicycles – I’ve never learnt to ride or ever owned a bike) would have been considered a frivolity, an unnecessary expense. I don’t begrudge my parents this, I knew they worked hard, saved and scrimped, so I never demanded anything of them which might be considered a luxury, but that didn’t stop me feeling sad. So on November the 5th I used to sit in the dark and look out of the first floor back window and try to catch glimpses of other people’s displays. If there was nothing in the terraced back gardens, I’d look to the skyline and try to catch the explosions of distant rockets bursting, note the colours, the greens, reds, blues, brilliant whites, the mortars pop pop popping into the air and exploding. For those really far away displays I’d hold my breath in expectation, the silent burst of light, then a moment later hear the boom or crackle. I’d be excited by the magic of science, the speed of light and the speed of sound, the sync ever so slightly out. And then I’d go to bed. The next day some of the kids at school would marvel at the displays they’d been to, but a lot of kids were like me, they watched the fireworks from their windows too.

November 4th

 

Life’s clamour settles

behind the eyes, industry

and dream hammers forge

I’m on holiday for two weeks. A staycation. I want to be inspired to write. Or I’ll just write anyway, even if it’s gibberish. There is always something worth salvaging!

November 3rd

 

flawed fallen angel

the goatherd of paradise

tainted by mortals

I watched a documentary “How the Devil Got His Horns”. It was another brilliant BBC programme. Basically it concentrated on the art history of the Devil, Lucifer, Satan, whatever you call him.

How the rarely mentioned character in the Bible took on more and more significance over the ages. Early depictions of him, were actually as an angel in the sense we would understand, beautiful, fine featured, feathered wings, even with a halo. But the image got more horrific and corrupted over time, horned, goat legged, sharp fanged, forked tailed, inflicting terrible tortures upon sinners. I can imagine the illiterate entering church and looking at these horrific frescoes and conceptualising eternal damnation. I can also imagine the wild imaginings of artists to make their devil more horrific, more violent and shocking. On the one side, for those commissioning the works, a prime example of fear used to control of course. On the other, the artistic license to have fun with a creating piece of work and really go to town on it!

The Devil is a complex character, I’m no Theologian or Philosopher, I’m not a believer, but I imagine that the Devil is much like anyone, neither “good” nor “evil”, just flawed, just as Jesus was flawed, but always doing his best, hanging around with the lowest of society, promoting equality and love, which led to his global appeal.

If the Devil was banished from heaven, then the last place you should send him to have a think about his actions is where us lot live. There’s no chance of redemption hanging around with us bunch of fucked up mortals.

From the BBC Website, detail from the frescoes painted by Luca Signorelli in Orvieto Cathedral. Considering how realistic and contemporary this looks it’s actually quite surprising this was painted in the early 1500s.

November 2nd

the meek sun revives

stone hearts warm and swell with blood

Lazarus life light

On cold days the sun provides that warmth to lift even the coldest heart, to force a smile, to melt, even by a tiny amount, a sadness. Here are some photos I took in Centenary Wood and the place I keep returning to, the Pond on the moors. That solitary swan seems to be living there now, it makes me sad to think he or she might have lost their mate.

All copyright to photos © Mel Melis

November 1st

dragged back thunder clap

shattered shards of pond scatter

as regal wings boom

By Flitton pond, we watched a Swan clean itself, thrashing and preening, when it rears up, it’s magnificent. When it claps its wings together, the noise is surprisingly loud, you can almost believe the old wives tale that they are able to break your arm!

Photos I took below © Mel Melis