the sourcerer: City Mouse visits Country House

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

City Mouse visits Country House

The Better Halves picked me up and whisked me away to the misty mountains of Suurbraak. Their house is the perfect mix of old and new. There's an Esse stove just like my granny used to have:

The gas spectacular:

As well as an open hearth in the corner, for geselligheid and the odd indoor braai. Our party of six included the canine contingent: Sir Max and Lady Seven I've known since they were kids, but the new guy was a wild card. I saw him eyeing me as I piled up a second plate of supper. (Lady who are you eating all the fillet steak like some polite kind of wolf?)

At night I slept under striped linen and a pile of fluffy quilts. It felt like the story of the princess and the pea, but in reverse. (The pea in question being a dog named Jean, who finally gave me the nod.)

I got up at six and stood on the stoep, looking at the mountains. A long-forgotten fragment of poetry came to mind: as the mist leaves no scar on the dark green hill...

The breeze was warm and promised something about summer coming and feeling different then.

Sheep grazing in the cemetery. Farm gates. Mustard mashed potatoes. Apple tart and cream. Coffee in bed. Dog's wet nose. Snowdrops. Demented roosters with no grasp of day or night. But the best thing of all: seeing the way these two people appreciate each other. Kudos.

1 comment:

Chris said...: good old Leonard Cohen, in case you were wondering. People think he's just a muso, but you'll find him in your Norton's.
"so my body leaves no scar on you, nor ever will."
CX; June 29, 2010 at 10:35 AM

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You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.