Boris (Not Quite) Goodunuv

Tags

Boris, Boris Godunuv

 

The Death of Boris

Having sung ‘I have attained supreme power’, he joins the Chorus to sing ‘The Funeral Bell’ before expiring.

c Candia Dixon-Stuart 30/06/2016

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Dead Donkey

Tags

Animal Farm, Animalism, Beasts of England, Benjamin, Brexit, dead donkey, etymology, revolution, Snowball and Napoleon, Sugarcandy Mountain, The Windmill

I’m with Benjamin on this one, I said, sipping my Macchiato.

Benjamin? Brassica interjected.

Yes, the cynical one.

You surprise me.  Brassie can be ironic sometimes.

Yes, we are all being taken to the knacker’s yard in a battle bus.  No one can

read what it says on the side. Benjamin had a good memory.  Things can

never be much better or much worse.  Hunger, hardship and disappointment

are the unalterable laws of life.

You surely don’t believe that, Candia?  What about the vision of Sugarcandy

Mountain?  We can build our own windmills. The Three Brexiteers

have promised that we will all be better off and the NHS and pensions

will benefit our own old and retired once again.

Hmmm, do you recall that by the fourth year of Animalism and

independence, Animal Farm depended completely on its trade with

the wider world?  Rations were reduced and lighting was cut in the stalls.

There was no such outcome as the three day week and the full

manger.

Yes, Candia, but the animals had a feeling of dignity and held

spontaneous demonstrations to celebrate their own triumphs.

Yeah, and a lot of history was re-written as well.  The animals felt

that they had re-gained what they had before.  As for Snowball and

Napoleon, they were in cahoots with the Enemies and eventually

traded with whichever partner promoted their own selfish,

unprincipled desires.

So, who do you reckon are Snowball and Napoleon?

I leave it entirely to your own judgement, comrade.

So, are you on your way to vote now?  Remember, old Jones was not

so bad, even if he was a Fascist.

Yes, I had better watch out for the low-flying campaigning pigeons.

I don’t want to be crapped on.  Nor do I want to be savaged by a band of

trained puppies.

And I left, humming ‘Beasts of England’ cynically.

Brassie appropriated a couple of sugar cubes for Post-Revolution

sustenance, adjusted her Alice band and went to check  her parking

ticket on the gleaming new dog cart, between whose shafts she

willingly reined herself.

As for moi?

Well, no one has ever seen a dead donkey.  And being interested in

etymology, I remind you that le bon mot: ‘revolution’ has the inbuilt

concept of ending up exactly where you started.

 

 

Thicker Than Water

Tags

blood relation, blood-brothers, family rifts, reconciliation

St Michael the Archangel, Findlay,Ohio- Nheyob, 2011, cropped by Tahc.

 

I told you I am fixated on the sestina as a poetic form!

 

We are one because we share in one blood,

declares the priest, trying to evoke love,

in spite of all the centuries of rifts

and shameful practices within God’s family.

We gather in an act of reconciliation,

erasing the thromboses from the past.

 

Can we negate, wipe out the shameful past?

There’s an indelibility in blood.

No matter how we crave reconciliation,

we cannot will coagulation, love;

we cannot commandeer family

and force relations to cement their rifts.

 

Inevitably there will be rifts

in the heart’s polar regions; ice sheets from the past

crack, fissure, melt. And, in the family,

though connections are through blood,

they can only be maintained by love

and transfusions of reconciliation.

 

And every time we achieve reconciliation,

broach the breaches; bridge the gaping rifts,

we spin the web of Love;

we dialyse those platelets from the past

and filter those corpuscles of bad blood,

for the holistic health of our family.

 

But what about the wider family?

If we attain reconciliation

in the microcosm of our kith, kin and blood,

could we extend goodwill to rifts

of a global nature?  In the past

progress has only come about through love.

 

Sharing a meal can be a sign of love-

introducing the stranger to one’s family;

cancelling out the debts of the past,

in order to gain reconciliation;

throwing out lifelines that span rifts;

being prepared to become blood-

 

brothers, for the sake of the human family;

ultimate reconciliation; burying of the past;

grafting rifts and banking some good blood.

 

Leopard after Dark

Tags

beaver lamb, Bhutan, bling, capybara, Ganges, Goa, Guatemala, La Giocanda, mink, Noel Coward, orang-utan, Raj, red panda, shagreen, shibboleth, Sikkim, solecism, tortoiseshell, U and non-U, wolverine

A re-blog from erstwhile…

Dahn: Own work.  Leopard, Botswana

I am reminded of one of my encounters with a Suttonford grande dame who had experienced the days of the Raj first hand.  She measured out her widowhood in coffee spoons and cigarettes at one of her favoured venues- not the Costamuchamullah Must-Seen Cafe, stylish though it be, but rather The Peal o’ Bells, Public House. 

One lunchtime –cloth: on (dinner:cloth off) – she sat in a cloud of smoke, which spiralled upwards, like mist rising from The Ganges at dawn. I was moved to admire her leopard skin coat.  She minimally acknowledged my obeisance with a dismissive movement of her fag.

A few evenings later, she was leaving a drinks party which was being held to honour veterans.  The Husband and I used to be inundated with invitations to such, but lately we have found less favour from les nouveaux.  By way of something to say, I asked her where her admired coat was, as she was being solicitously wrapped in a stole by a selected minion who had been appointed to see her safely across the road.  She gave me a withering look , secure in her very U status and corrected my social solecism, resulting in this poem:

 

LEOPARD AFTER DARK

 

He placed the mink stole round her neck

(not the fur coat she’d worn on deck.)

She saw my look and then observed

the riposte which I had deserved:

“You don’t wear leopard after dark!”

“Never? Not even for a lark?”

“Precisely. It’s not the done thing.”

“What about ocelot?”

“Too bling.

It’s like cloth for luncheon, but NOT

for dinner? One just never ought.”

“Is there any jurisdiction

on camel? Is there restriction

on beaver lamb, cashmere, fox-fur? –

shibboleths on which They concur? –

a consensus aimed at non-U?”

 

“The proles took to fake kangaroo.

In crepuscular hours of dusk,

outrageously they sported musk

and, as far as Guatemala,

riff-raff lounged in capybara.

Minxes out in the Sahara

had bikinis of impala.

One can pose as La Giocanda

in a thong of rare red panda,

but animal right protesters

wanted bobbies to arrest us.

They showed chagrin;

I owned shagreen:

clutch purses, belts in wolverine,

tortoiseshell compacts – what’s the fuss?

Darling, they’re just not one of us.

 

In Sikkim some said, “That’s Betty.

She’s the one who’s wearing yeti”

I would sip a margarita,

naked, on a rug of cheetah.

(I was pretty well devoured

by a rampant Noel Coward.)

He quipped, ‘Little looks much snazzier

Than zebra pants and brassiere.’

In the mountains of Bhutan,

my tippet was orang-utan

and my favourite windcheater

was two hides of tanned anteater.

(At altitude on Everest,

one needs an extra tiger vest.)

 

At a barbeque in Goa,

I singed my flamingo boa.

To meet the Queen, I wore a hat

and had it trimmed with a fruit bat.

There was a tiny rigmarole

when footmen took my corgi stole.

She said archly,

‘Is that dodo?’

I looked at my heel:

‘Ma’am, no, no.

I’m sure your carpets are quite clean.’

She glared:

‘Your headgear’s what we mean.

 

Though denied my decoration,

I still caused a huge sensation.

I’m a seasoned old globetrotter.

I wear stoat and I wear otter,

I wore porpoise, whale and shark –

But NEVER leopard after dark.”

Hi, Ai Weiwei!

Tags

Ai Weiwei, Chinese culture, NGV, Warhol and Ai Weiwei

Couldn’t resist having a go at re-creating the NGV posters in Melbourne, advertising the Warhol and Ai Weiwei combined show….

Love,

Candia.

New Release

Tags

Celtic Christianity, churches, forgiveness, Hampshire, miracles, monologues, Music, parables, pilgrimage, Sculpture, sestinas

Dixon-Stuart books have just made this anthology available on Amazon.

Candia thoroughly recommends this insightful read to all her followers.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell,

A Hell of Heaven…

John Milton: Paradise Lost, Bk 1.