Mise en abyme

Setu, who knows many languages and all kinds of amazing things, and also hails from sardine country himself, has filled another gap in my knowledge: the device whereby the lady on the sardine tin is holding a sardine tin with her own image on it, presumably, if one could see, holding a sardine tin with her image on it etc, is known as mise en abyme.  According to Wiki (the link given), it is used to describe 'the visual experience of standing between two mirrors, seeing an infinite reproduction of one's image' as in the painting Las Meninas by Velasquez, but it originally came from heraldry, when a coat of arms contained another coat of arms within it.  It's acquired currency in modern critical theory, and can be used to describe plays within plays, representations of buildings contained within the same buildings themselves - there's one of these in the stained glass in the church in Moncontour - films within films, dreams within dreams even.  It's long been used in packaging and marketing and children are particularly taken with it, and of course it's also related to the theory of fractals.

Setu's own first awareness of it was on the Vache-qui-Rit box, where said Laughing Cow is wearing ear-rings of boxes of cheese with the same image on. My favourite instance of it was in the model village at Bourton-on-the-Water in the English Cotswolds, which was a perfect replica of the actual village at the time, and contained a model of the model village, which in turn contained a model of the model of the model village... not sure if there was a recognisable one within that.

Considering the prevalence of the device and of the term for it, and the importance and interest in it in all manner of circles, I'm rather ashamed not to have known about it before, but I love learning new things (as long as they're nice ones, of course...), and will look out for it now.  It's also brought it yet further to the front of my consciousness that I want to read Borges, whose stories of rooms within rooms, libraries within libraries, reflections of reflections, Setu  said his early diet of La Vache qui Rit prepared him for well !  My sister sent me a copy of The Other Tiger a while back, and lately I've been fascinated by Zoe Blue's strange and beautiful paintings and reflections inspired in part by his work.

Anyway, I wondered how I might try to produce something in the mise en abyme line myself. I was pointing the camera around in the kitchen, particularly at different coloured circular objects with shiny surfaces, thinking I might just do a collage, and it occurred to me one could do a collage within a collage...

I took it to the power of six, so there are five collages contained within the final one. It becomes rather compelling, not least because Picasa will automatically shuffle the images each time, and one has to keep recreating the order, only substituting the last collage made each time in the final space.  I exported and posted it full size, so if you can embiggen it (there's an expression one doesn't hear so much now!) sufficiently, you can perhaps see what I mean.

~

Toadstool towns and mushroom madness

What would November posting be without a fungal foray or two?  And it's quite a mushroom year; I have gathered so many edible ones - field and horse mushrooms and a few shaggy ink caps, only what I'm sure of, for of course there are bold mushroom hunters, and there are old mushroom hunters, and I intend to be among the latter - that I have mushroom duxelles enough for Heston Blumenthal to make a beef Wellington replica of Kings Cross station.

There are also some interesting non-edible ones about, most of which I can't begin to identify. I took a walk quite late today, so the light was a bit gloomy in places, sunset bright in others.

These greyish domes are emerging from a shady roadside bank,

and this one was quite a bright violet colour, top and bottom.

Fungus seems to benefit from the recent cutting of the banks and verges, on one shady corner under some trees there was quite a toadstool town.

And there is a patch under a confer hedge of good old fly agaric, that look like they came from the pages of a story book.

I remember hearing or reading somewhere that these used to be ingested frequently in Lapland, until the coming of vodka, which presumably provided a more reliable chemical means feeling good.  Curious, I googled 'eating fly agaric' and rather wished I hadn't, finding myself in a very strange world of mushroom enthusiasts of a very particular kind.  Among other things, I learned that the Lapps were said to feed it to their reindeer, then drink the reindeer's urine. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me though, how would they collect it? I thought reindeer were kind of semi-wild, they wouldn't obligingly stand around for a Lapp with a bucket would they?

Anyway, on one fascinating site, and also a very responsible and sensible one, devoted to the concerns of the Youth of Today, where I became horribly distracted, not only in reading about the various means, fungal and otherwise, by which people seek to alter their brain chemistry, but by various other matters to which, by dint of my advancing years, out-of-touchness and general congenital deep lack of cool, I am a stranger, I was informed of the effects of ingesting amanita muscaria:


- A dream-like state common to lucid dreaming, which can involve out-of-body experiences and enhanced clarity of the mind.
- Synaesthesia, where users experience a blurring of their senses, like smelling words or tasting colours.
- A strong internal dialogue with the feeling of being able to talk yourself through personal issues
- Blurred vision, with dilated pupils and watery eyes, as well as a runny nose.
- Involuntarily muscle twitching and trembling.
- Increased sweating and saliva production.
- Effects usually last between six and eight hours.

So I won't be making duxelles with those then.  Though the internal dialogue sounds quite interesting...

In a hurry? Why not a tin of sardines?

A very quick post here as we're off to eat curry with the Quiet American.

Tinned sardines, a part of the cultural landscape of Brittany.  The canning plants often long established, in quite remote places on the coast, even on islands, their names punning or picturesque: Connétable, la Belle Iloise, Phare d'Eckmühl... The tins themselves I think are often minor works of art, and delightfully old fashioned. This brand, la Douarneniste I've not come across before, but I scanned it because I thought the Breton lady was lovely, not least because she's holding a tin of sardines with her very own image on them, which presumably, if one could go small enough, would be holding another tin of sardines with her picture on, and so ad infinitum, an old device which has always intrigued.

And they taste rather good too.

Flash fiction Friday # 2

Less quick-as-a-flash this time, but purposely kept to 300 words.  An anecdote, mostly heard perhaps third or fourth hand, so must be considered fiction.

~

'It's astonishing how many people' she said 'don't know how to hem a pair of trousers.  But I don't mind, it means they pay me to do them.'

The man who often came to have his trousers hemmed certainly wasn't skilled like that.  He wasn't very skilled socially either, somewhere on the autistic spectrum, seldom speaking to her or to anyone.  She was easy and accepting round him, not trying too hard to draw him out. She got on well enough too with the young man with Downs syndrome, to whom she gave a regular lift into the town where she had her small business and he attended a day centre.  The few words they exchanged followed established patterns:

She: 'Which CD shall we play?'
He: 'This one.'

He: 'It's nearly the weekend!'
She: 'Yep.  Doing anything nice?'
He: 'Maybe.'

The man who came to have his trousers hemmed would stand silent in her downstairs sewing room as she moved quickly round his feet, pinning and tacking.  He looked away and wouldn't meet her eyes, answered her in monosyllables, paid his couple of dollars on collection and hurried off.

In the week following her sudden and unexpected death, her family - husband and just-grown children - decided to bring her body home for a time before the funeral, trying to give themselves something of the time with her they hadn't had, however little.  They laid her in the sewing room, it was her space, and on the ground floor was easier, looking out onto the garden.

The following day, people came and went, and outside the window of the sewing room, the man who had come to have his trousers hemmed stood, his face pressed to the glass, looking at her and talking non-stop.

Eight things for the eighth

1. My arm aches a bit, but I didn't feel the needle going in and only a little coming out, I didn't bleed, and we are both now flu jabbed.  Regretting the departure of both our friendly local garagiste and insurance agents, our doctor assures us he'll be around for a few years yet, then wants to talk about American politics, despite other patients in the waiting room.
2. "There are things we forage for" says Michel Roux Jr, on being presented with a vegetable accompaniment of steamed ground elder, " which we should just walk past!" 
3. Three very large white turkeys, two living, one dead, are looking lost on the large roundabout coming into Loudeac, clearly having fallen off a lorry. I'm not sure who to tell, follow signs to the mairie, but come upon the municipal police station first.  There they are attentive and take me seriously, and when I leave the town an hour later the turkeys are gone.  I wonder if anyone will get a free Christmas dinner out of it...
4. A possible habitable planet has been discovered, and 'not too far away' according to the Sci-Tech text news, which is to say just 44 light years. 'The star HD 40307 is a perfectly quiet old dwarf star' a German astronomer says, which sounds a nice kind of star to be orbiting.
5. Spelt beer, alcohol free as it's a booze-free night.  It's really rather good, or we think so, and they're our taste buds.
6. Tom wants to talk, over tea and an Eccles cake, about things in his head, but the phone rings twice.  First it's someone trying to sell some kind of eco-energy, then it's J who needs to tell me of a changed arrangement, but wants to chat inconsequentially about domestic detail, which she can do when I see her tomorrow anyway.  I get rid of both of them very quickly without being rude.
7. Cullen skink, made with leeks, best way to eat smoked haddock.
8. My internet radio Christmas present is on its way! Guaranteed reception, and no more horrid crackle when the kitchen lights are on!  

~

And eight quite random photos from recent days. Shall I give them labels? Nah.

~

St Brieuc sunset

Time was I'd leave you feeling somewhat frayed,
unequal to the task of you, but now
I step out from your door, almost sure
of the streets and alleyways, the little veins
stitched with stone, late windowsill geraniums,
wrought iron gates that curtain courtyards
of winter-facing fig-trees and mimosa, 
tall windows piercing through the foreign dark
of houses onto walled gardens, valleys, slopes,
and hope that friendship might grow bright as well as fade.

Now at the church whose rank decay, 
lifeless liturgies and cracked glazed Lazarus, 
once told of horror more than resurrection,
(It is well known, none can be held responsible for her despair...)
the lycée students sit ranged on the stone steps 
like flowering auriculars, wrapped round 
with coats and scarves and one another,
looking down towards the evening town 
washed kindly rose and gold, and holding out
against the winter and the shortening day.
   

Three collages: logs, lichen, light.

Goat

Just a small one, tethered at the old railtrack.  Don't know who she belongs to; people, dogs and an occasional vehicle go by, but no one seems to worry much.  She was a little skittish about Mol, but let me touch her soft leathery nose.

Snatching time between...

... the fairly despondency-inducing 'Obama: What Happened to Hope' with Andrew Marr , and the fun-filled escapism of Downton Abbey.

And despite promising to take the camera out more, I still forgot to this morning, so I didn't catch the roost of jackdaws in the lime-green foliage and dark tracery of the plane tree above the car park, or the brown and yellow carpet of leaves tufted with sweet chestnut husks, or the dark micro-world, the small change of the wall pennywort, the seedling foxglove and moss velour cradling the perfect gold toadstool in the rotted hollow it the roots of the oak tree.

But I filled my pockets up with chestnuts, so I didn't come home empty-handed.

Free stuff.  Chestnuts and yesterdays mushrooms, which though quite well out and open with velvety brown rather than pink gills, weren't insect-eaten at all, and made good rich duxelles, the best way to preserve wild mushrooms, I think.  The pumpkin seeds I'll be happy to give to the birds, if they can eat them.  We buy an awful lot of sunflower seeds through the winter, which these might supplement.

That'll have to do for tonight!
 

Cutting up vegetables for Alphabet Soup: the wholesome action of taking a pair of scissors to something you've made.

There is now just under a month to go to the deadline for Alphabet Soup exhibition at Clive Hicks-Jenkins Artlog.  A generous deadline, as probably any manager, editor whatever of any experience, or really anyone of any common sense,  can tell you, is not necessarily a guarantee of a result. People commit enthusiastically, maybe make a start, then put it on the back burner with a sense that they have all the time in the world, then before they know it, the deadline is nearly upon them, other things have suddenly become urgent, and something has to give...

Not everyone works like this, some people get stuck in from the off and produce over and above (go Leonard Greco!), but many do.  I should know, I am one such, even when it's a project I've taken at least some responsibility for.  In fact I made quite a few false starts, and part of my dithering has been because I had a plan  but didn't in fact like what I was doing, and went about it reluctantly. I set off with one theme, did one piece and decided I didn't like the style and the medium, stayed with the theme but changed the style and materials, decided though these were working it was really the theme I didn't like, changed to a theme I preferred but then the style and materials didn't work for it, reverted to the first kind of medium... 

Anyone would think I was a serious artist, but serious or not, one has to be happy in one's work, as my mother used to say.  So there I was, creating an 'edible alphabet', pen and ink drawings done with fine-liners of the kind I was knocking out with happy facility when I was about sixteen (with a Rotring drawing pen then, cheap, good quality fine-liners didn't exist, Ball-Pentels were the closest, remember those?).  Only they weren't as good as the ones I was doing then.  I also had an idea to give each one not only an 'A is for...' label, but a kind of alliterative legend, for example A would be 'Amazing anyone first ate an Artichoke'.  I have completed the whole twenty-six of these ( tough depicting a foodstuff for 'i' - so I've resorted to 'Ingesting insects?  I'd instantly be ill!')

I was, still am, quite happy with this formula, and I'm actually still quite happy doing that kind of tight, illustrative old-fashioned line work, the kind of thing I grew up with, it's nostalgic, small-scale, clean  and portable so can be picked up and put down easily.  But I still didn't really like the finished pieces.  They hung together badly, looked dreadful in the scans, the borders were wobbly and soppy and oh, that awful, jejune schoolgirl script of mine!   

So I picked up a big pair of scissors and chopped them up! 

And after I'd taken the photo I screwed up the outside bits with the script on and lit the fire with them! It was great. 

So now I'm on the fourth, or the third-and-a-halfth attempt. I'm not quite sure how it will finish up, but this way I can play around with different collaging possibilities; for the script I may well print something with a proper font and sticking it on.  We'll see. What you see here are an artichoke, some beans and a cauliflower, some nuts and an orange - guess what I'll be doing for 'p'? I'll post some more as I go along.

Submissions are still open for the Alphabet Soup exhibition until the end of the month, details here.