This afternoon the lake is restless lead and the silver sky holds pewter clouds.
\nThe forest is copper and brass.
\nThe horizon is gold leaf burnished bright.
\nAutumn\u2019s heraldry is or and argent on a field of gules and verdigris.<\/p>\n
Days like this drive me into an exquisite ecstacy of desperation and despair.
\n(Or it would, if the insulin of reason didn\u2019t calm me a little. I get landscape overdose the same way others get caffeine jitters or sugar highs. Now there\u2019s a good subject – the Endocrinology of Enchantment\u2026 sorry, where was I? Too much horizon. Forgive me, I\u2019m okay now..)
\nIn the inch above that horizon, by the way, there is a kingdom of clouds, layered, flounced, hazily brooding. Disappointing in a photograph. Impossible to paint.
\nSpeaking of which\u2026
\nDante Gabriel Rossetti is said to have exclaimed, when his woodblock supplier sent him blocks slightly shorter than he had ordered, and had the temerity to add that it was only a quarter of an inch after all, \u00ab What do you mean ONLY a quarter of an inch !? I can put a whole city in a quarter of an inch ! \u00bb
\nThat Rossetti, always the optimist.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The transposing of miles of depth on a flat sheet of paper is an exercise in carefully planned folly. Something only the right side of the brain would take on, doomed as it is to glorious defeat.<\/p>\n
This is the reason I reach such heights of exasperation (it doesn\u2019t show; inside my dour, expressionless Protestant exterior is an equally dour expressionless interior) when I see people draw using EVERY reflex that the other side of their brain has learned by rote to write. \u00ab Loosen up ! \u00bb I holler, don\u2019t hold that pencil like you were taking notes ! It\u2019s a magician\u2019s wand, a sword, a conductor\u2019s baton, not a confounded ballpoint ! ! Do it right now or I\u2019ll swat you one!\u00bb\u00a0 Actually I don\u2019t do that at all, I usually take the coward\u2019s way out and say \u00ab That\u2019s a lovely drawing. \u00bb, hoping against all hope that the note I attach to the end of the sentence, like some forlorn hope in a faltering charge, will elicit the raised eyebrow that says \u00ab And\u2026 ? \u00bb But, more often than not it lingers in the air and fades away. Another time\u2026<\/p>\n
If anything shows how far we have fallen from the grace all children possess, it\u2019s the two and half million copies of \u00ab Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain \u00bb that have sold since it was published, witness to the fact that learning to write dismantles the ability to draw. While I\u2019m not suggesting illiteracy is the answer, it seems a more balanced approach between book learning and the arts would make a happier civilization.<\/p>\n
The same logic applies to languages. Serious studies have shown that by 10, a child\u2019s brain is losing the flexibility that permits effortless absorption of foreign idioms – precisely the time they are introduced to a second language in most schools. Maybe that\u2019s why they taught us French starting at 14 when I was a kid – to make sure we little British Columbians would NEVER fully understand our Quebec compatriots\u2026<\/p>\n
As for me, I\u2019ll see you later. I\u2019m on my way back outside.\u00a0 While I was dilpidating my time in idle musing, everything has changed.The lake is copper now, and the sky is rust.<\/p>\n
SITTING UP READING LATE<\/p>\n
Somehow I wandered onto amazon.com (\u00ab Hello Mr Howe ! Thankyou for logging on to amazon ! Where were you, we\u2019re eager to take more of your money ! \u00bb) and wandered back out with my credit card red-hot and smoking. Now the books have started to arrive.
\nNeedless to say, I\u2019m overjoyed.<\/p>\n
Some are to replace books I once had. Patrick Leigh Fermor is one of my favourite authors. Ages ago, I gave my copy of \u00ab A Time of Gifts \u00bb to someone, and left, appropriately so, my well-read copy of \u00ab Between the Woods and the Water \u00bb somewhere near the ocean on New Zealands\u2019 North Island (likely under a tree, given the title) so getting back on the road to Constantinople is long overdue.
\nThe question of course is will he ever finish the third volume, or will legions of avid hikers-in-the-mind, myself amongst them, be forever and forlornly stranded at the Iron Gates ?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve also found exactly the kind of book I love : \u00ab The Alphabet Versus the Goddess \u00bb The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leoard Shlain.<\/p>\n
I even found another copy of Gunnar Brugge\u2019s indispensable book on Norwegian churches that went astray somewhere between Hobbiton and Edoras, half a decade and half a world away. My \u201cnew\u201d copy will be in German, but I only read pictures anyway.<\/p>\n
And the Kalevala of course.
\nAnd a book on Katmandu.<\/p>\n
Next stop : everything by Bruce Chatwin, starting with \u201cIn Patagonia\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking of which, I\u2019ve also ordered EVERY picture book amazon had on Patagonia. (Don\u2019t ask, I\u2019m just trying to help them turn a profit\u2026 and besides, I already have everything on Iceland and there wasn\u2019t much on Tasmania or Skellig Michael.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Or the Luminous Metallurgy of Despair This afternoon the lake is restless lead and the silver sky holds pewter clouds. The forest is copper and brass. The horizon is gold leaf burnished bright. Autumn\u2019s heraldry is or and argent on a field of gules and verdigris. Days like this drive me into an exquisite ecstacy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[509,510],"class_list":["post-2125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicles","tag-metallurgy","tag-pewter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1PY8Y-yh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}