This is God's Own Country
This is God's Own Country
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TAKING OUT THE TRASH

We are all becoming a little bit strange in our street. There is a pass the parcel game of personal histories going on and we are not in control of it. We have been jumbled up and we may forget who we are because we have lost touch with who we were yesterday. There is no panic yet but there is just a hint of gathering concern. Who knows, before long there could be civil unrest, pandemonium, riots.

It started early this morning. The seeds of discomfort were sewn just as many had left for work, were hanging out washing, reading the morning paper. While we were in our homes, in our gardens or on our way to work, men in blue came and set the time bomb a-ticking. Were they spies from the FBI? No one in our street has said it yet but, cowering behind our curtains, we have all started to think it.

These men in blue, they came and they took away our rubbish in a big noisy lorry with a crushing thing on the back. They emptied our big grey plastic dustbins into their lorry and drove away. They drove away and all our dustbins got jumbled. Maybe the blue men jumbled them before they left, or maybe it was something more sinister. Elves? No one will say that either, or pixies, but there is certain magic in our mayhem.

Well now, it was evening before the mix up was discovered and now we all have a problem. Through the day we have fed new rubbish to our plastic dustbins, in good faith, believing they were the same friends they had always been. But no, some of my rubbish went into number 18’s bin but they don’t have my bin, so now she has my rubbish and I have a mystery bin with some of her rubbish in it and tomorrow I will have to try to trade this bin of unknown origin in order to get my own bin back. But whose rubbish will be in it?

Now, never mind the blue bin men, they have been and gone, the worry is these men in grey suits you hear about. What if they were to turn up now and demand to see our rubbish? There we would stand, in our front gardens, with the contents of someone else’s dustbin laid out in front of us. Would the suit boys listen to our protestations about a mix-up? Both you and I know they would not. There we would stand, guilty of each other’s crimes, while the men picked through each scrap of discordant discard with the ends of their pencils, pulling inscrutable faces and writing everything down in their little black notepads.

Someone, somewhere down our street will have to bear the unjust shame of organic wrappings, another may suffer the miscarriage of empty pack upon pack of pop tarts, pot noodles. But here’s the issue, what the hell is in my misplaced bin out there? Out in the moonlight this unknown entity holds a piece of someone’s yesterday and it’s pretending to be mine. The little grey obelisk in the moonlight in my front garden is no longer my friend. He is a cuckoo in our nest and we can only fear what dread is secreted in his belly.

And, out there too, somewhere, is my bin, gobbling up someone else’s history. The dilemma in our street is growing with each new discard. We can’t stop, we can’t help ourselves, friend or foe we have to feed these wide-mouth monsters. That is what my bin is probably doing right now and it’s very unsettling.

Anyway, when you think about it, put it into some kind of context, despite the anguish, despite the turmoil, it comes down to one question: How could he do it to us?

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TS ELIOT vs MICHAEL COLLINS

this is why i been thinking ts eliot should be excluded, however my view has now changed, even though he does not hope to turn again, does not hope to turn, does not hope.

maybe it will sound like semantics but isn't a jailbreak the beginning of a journey? yes i know, doing the washing up is doing the washing up, but pragmatism and practicality can embrace the concept of soul. although there is still a machine, it is possible to be a ghost within it. (indeed, it would be possible to take the view that without the machine there can be no ghost - see the cat, see the cradle?).

there is no doubt that our lives are nasty, brutish and short, but is there no relief or enlightenment, no soul in shakespeare? in cezanne? in puccini?

i think it was the johnson man with the dictionary who said that human beings make beasts of themselves in order to ease the pain of being human. the evidence for this everywhere (mostly on city centre street corners at midnight on fridays.)

but cannot we become angels instead/as well as beasts? there are examples of people embracing the pain, of enduring despite it, or perhaps because of it, because it is a counterpoint. there can be no angels in eden. without evil is there no good? (not that i believe we should celebrate evil, human beings are creatures that strive. our striving, i believe, can be into betterness and away from increasing less evil badness)

much is like a seesaw, a counterbalance, a positive paradox.

and so to return to eliot. i will not strike him out because the clear blue line is surely about recognising the positives? like a multiple choice, we tick the positives but we do not strike out either the negatives or the dead ends, that would be a waste of energy, time and resource.

as for shackleton, he needs more analysis. i had believed that his was an entirely naive proposition, to seek the clear blue line where there is ice against sky. but i was wrong, his ship was called endurance. its destination was not its destiny, its purpose was to seek the clarity of "clearness" and "blueness" through, perhaps, what can be the only route - human endurance.

please tell me it is not more hollywood hype but i think michael collins had it in a nutshell, our only weapon is our refusal.

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BINGING THE BLUE

“blue skies, nothing but blue skies from now on.”

i switch on the television innocently to catch the news and there it was: bing crosby singing, “i’ve never seen sun shining so bright, never known things going so right, blue skies….” if I was paranoid or psychic I might have sworn it was a plot.

here was i believing that ‘blue’ and ‘sky’ had something to do with clarity and truth, a divine quest, a journey of the soul - oh how we love to fool ourselves! the hollywood dream machine already had it wrapped up and tied with a big silk bow.

this isn’t exploration, - “and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” - this is escapism. i hadn’t been mapping a journey only planning a jailbreak. i’m digging a tunnel of vision in a place where there is “no water only rock”. and the clear blue line is no more than the proverbial hope of ‘light at the end’.

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CLEAR BLUE RED HERRING

this is probably a red herring.



clear blue

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THE SEARCH IS ON

perhaps this may be of some help.

google search: clear blue line

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SPIRITUAL VAMPIRES OF POST-MODERNISM

some random thoughts about why it might be so difficult to define (or even fathom) the clear blue line.

postmodernism is the worship of ambiguity and uncertainty. all the "latest” thinking is that everything is relative, nothing is definitive, and that doubt has replaced guilt as the primary spiritual vampire of the age.

under such conditions few things are clear. things are more gray than blue. circles are in vogue at the expense of lines.

it may be a wish of childish fancy. a longing of the remembrance of things past.

still, i ponder...


from an american correspondent

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PRUFROCK AND THE KINGS

i might have to defend tse despite my reluctance after being totally convinced by summary of mr. p and his yellow evening.

i think it can be safely assumed that tse belonged to the lavatory set rendering such a humble word as toilets completely beneath consideration. this is despite the ‘fact’ that according to ‘someone in the trade’ speaking on radio 4, toilet is the correct word, lavatory being the wash-hand basin.

his advice was never to piss in the lavatory, which in the light of his informed opinion seems very sound.

now here’s my question: is to describe atrophy necessarily to subscribe to its inevitability? doesn’t tse express considerable unease at the whole shambolic lot? it is a fine judgement perhaps which is probably why i am using ‘unease’ rather than ‘reject’.

anyway i will not discard ‘journey of the magi’ and it’s disruption of the ‘old dispensations’ and that tension between the ordinary and extraordinary within the verse.


by e-mail

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WASHROOM PEDANT

i have decided that ts eliot must be excluded, despite his yellow fog and oyster shells. he is a proponent of inertia. he does not even despair because without hope, there cannot be despair. thus his poetry proposes nihilism. i cannot have truck with it.

his ancient greek, his latin, his hebrew is elitist. and angelic commoners must deny elitists.

nihilism is for champagne-sipping, cigar-smoking elitists who have discovered boredom in dishes of caviar.

and so we must refusenik eliot, we must deny the nihilists. we must become denialists of the view that it does not matter that the line is clear or blue (but of course, always accepting that the clear blue line, is neither clear nor blue, nor is it a line).

furthermore, a man of his intellectual intensity must have been aware that his chosen publishing name is an anagram of "toilets".

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AUSCHWITZ IN A TIN

vasarely’s blue did offer a momentary serenity of vision - that clear blue line of the quest but here’s my dilemma: the soul craves landscape.

the resistance of snow against skis, the bite of the wind, the glare of the sun, the smell of ice and blinking-white sandwiched between sea and sky. it requires film rather than photo, it requires transitory, changing, the threat of snow, the shadow of cloud, the retreating day, the desolation of nightfall and the blush of dawn. it requires both humanity and recognition of its irrelevance.

and yes, it is coat my eyes with butter and tell me lies about vietnam. But not for all time. a journey by its nature has both a beginning and end. do we have to choose between the universal and the particular? to choose only the universal is immoral when pain and suffering and delight are enmeshed in the particular. but must we reject the universal?

i do not always wish to weep for the penguins, nor admire their struggle. there’s plenty of time for tears and solidarity. i’m seeking the conscious self amidst time and space, set, of course, within an arctic landscape or under a desert sky.

i do not want to see sardines/pilchards in a tin, those tidy corpses of quick silver so efficiently dispatched by industrial capitalism, that inventor of auschwitz.

but tomorrow of course I might change my mind.

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BUTTER AND VIETNAM

i would suggest to hell with the cocoa butter, let's do it with Anchor - but that smacks too much of coat my eyes with butter, fill my ears with silver, stick my legs in plaster, tell me lies about vietnam.

the edge of the ice is patrolled by leopard seals whose favourite dish is chilled penguin. in order to feed their young - rather than be fed upon - the penguins have evolved a method of evading the seals. as they approach the edge of the ice, they dive deep. then, webbed feet creating jet-streak in the icy turquoise water, they power up and out, launching themselves into the air from the sea and sliding, belly first, on to the sanctuary of the ice.

a clear blue line if ever there was one. and, of course, an arctic marine equivalent of star streamer rockets. Indeed yes, (and yes, and yes) i believe there should be penguins. and fish.

next time you are in a supermarket, hunt down a tin of pilchards in oil, preferably olive oil. choose those with the prettiest wrapper (often the tin is inside a cardboard case). when you get home, open the box and, using the key in the top of the tin, peel back the lid, leaving it curled like a fat spring along the one retaining edge.

regard the little silver bodies all lying in tight-packed rows in golden oil.

i do not particularly like the taste of canned pilchards. i eat them for their art, for the god in all things. Pantheism, or perhaps, frying pan theism, if you will.

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FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

i love the vasarely - such blue and perfectly counter-balanced by white and black. i hadn’t thought of black. perhaps i was too hasty in discarding the penguins. do you think they could be trained to stand black back out and very still?

i want to think about the pre Raphaelites with their angelic commoners picked out in purple and turquoise. why settle for blue when you can have purple and turquoise? suddenly complication sounds appealing.

maybe we should all rub cocoa butter into our toes while singing a hymn to our feet and to hell with the rest.

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SEEKING THE NATURE OF BLUENESS

i begin to see drawbacks. as you point out, are clarity and aridity inextricably linked?

consider victor vasarely (a painting of his attached - interestingly from the tehran museum of contemporary art).

now old vic could knock up a good waterscape or scene of rural life as easy as kiss my hand.

but then he started dangerously artistic thoughts such as the nature of "form" and the need for clarity of "colour".
the attached is one of his earlier, more colourful, formful pieces. later he painted a white square on a white canvas. he found his clear blue line. it was a white square.

i am reminded of adrian mitchell's critic who had flat white plates in his flat white flat.

john cale, i think recorded 15 minutes of silence as a piece of music

he has won a copyright case against a composer who used 1 minute of his silence without paying royalties.

and then I think of those pre-Raphaelites with their angelic commoners picked out in purple and turquoise.
pigments powering politics?

oh to hell with it....sometimes we have to let tom wolfe's star streamer rockets light up the sky.



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FROM A CORRESPONDENT

blue certainly but what happened to clear?

surely - blue, sea and sky-blue, can only be truly itself where it meets a cold white line of ice. and only clear beneath an uncompromising arctic noon; between the tension of colour and light; in a landscape uncluttered by vegetation and devoid of inhabitation, apart from the occasional solitary bear.

penguins are out, too human, too collective, too eager, huddled for warmth and hatchling-committed. northwards and to hell with the south!

but wait, we could always opt for azure blue above an arid yellow, momentarily caught amongst an oasis of palm. heat and blue, does it really work? to the western eye cool and blue seem inextricably linked. do the bedouin dream of the arctic?

expeditions require careful preparation and considerable planning. i fear we need more informed insight. i'm considering shackleton and some, as yet unidentified, desert text. i might have to add a mountain-climber to the list.

'a cool breeze blowing' by an armenian artist (whose name if I ever knew it has escaped me) comes immediately to mind. 'a kind of blue' by miles davies might have something to offer.

whales calling might be another option.

any chance of sponsors, do you think? a journey of the mind, is it bankrollable?

NB - Nxxxx is currently singing to her feet while rubbing liberal amounts of cocoa butter into her toes.

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FROM A CORRESPONDENT

without the necessary athletic physique, snow boots and fur-lined underwear perhaps we should begin by searching for the clear blue line in its perfect pictorial form.

art galleries, exhibitions and of course the coffee table arctic explorer's photographic record.

or perhaps we should seek that most perfect of views (re a room with a view and dante, i think) the sky above our heads.

are there any poems? what did hilary and shackleton have to say on the subject? a little research is perhaps required.

and then there are the penguins.

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GRACE AND THE HOLY GRAIL

about two years ago now, or so it seems, i was sent on a fool's errand by an idiot.

the quest was a search for truth. and the result was a fruit so small, so bitter, so insignificant, that it took me a while to appreciate how valueless had been the exercise.

and so, to sum up, i found this: yes, there is truth out there. but in small particles like industrial diamonds, useful for milling or grinding, but no Truth, no kohinhoor. such a gem is for fools and british monarchs.

and such a desultory result poses its own question - where or what is the ark of the covenant?

and the search is refined, redefined if you will. it has expanded and will include views from around the world (please feel free to send yours).

it is this: the hunt for the Clear Blue Line. all that follows, or (due to the inverted nature of blogging) precedes this will ponder this more vague and more valid question.

so. what does the Clear Blue Line mean to you?

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why jonah?

1 et praeparavit Dominus piscem grandem ut degluttiret Ionam et erat Iona in ventre piscis tribus diebus et tribus noctibus
2 et oravit Iona ad Dominum Deum suum de utero piscis
3 et dixit clamavi de tribulatione mea ad Dominum et exaudivit me de ventre inferni clamavi et exaudisti vocem meam
4 et proiecisti me in profundum in corde maris et flumen circumdedit me omnes gurgites tui et fluctus tui super me transierunt
5 et ego dixi abiectus sum a conspectu oculorum tuorum verumtamen rursus videbo templum sanctum tuum
6 circumdederunt me aquae usque ad animam abyssus vallavit me pelagus operuit caput meum
7 ad extrema montium descendi terrae vectes concluserunt me in aeternum et sublevabis de corruptione vitam meam Domine Deus meus
8 cum angustiaretur in me anima mea Domini recordatus sum ut veniat ad te oratio mea ad templum sanctum tuum
9 qui custodiunt vanitates frustra misericordiam suam derelinquunt
10 ego autem in voce laudis immolabo tibi quaecumque vovi reddam pro salute Domino
11 et dixit Dominus pisci et evomuit Ionam in aridam

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