Stairways of the mind…

*

“There are a lot of ugly looking lions in Portmeirion.”

We shrink from wondering whether or not one of them is devouring the Buddha’s missing right forearm.

“And lots of steps.”

“Number Six spends a lot of time in the village running up and down steps.”

Run up one set of steps in Portmeirion and a Mansion becomes a Two-up-Two-down.

Run down another and one is accosted by a plaster-cast-christ declaiming on a balcony from which depends a black sheep.

*

*

“Soft clothes?”

“Perspective. One is spatial, the other, intellectual.”

“Clever that.”

Here, the ridiculous jostles with the sublime to unfeasibly pleasing effect.

“It’s nothing more than a clutter and jumble of odds and sods, lovingly reassembled into, well, something, uncluttered and well ordered.”

“Much like memories, perhaps.”

“Or what memory makes of experience.”

*

*

In the corner of that courtyard there, a manicured tree sprouts in-front of a doorway.

Or rather, a doorway, which leads nowhere, has been constructed behind a tree which is then kept manicured.

Its the perfect place in which to reconsider one’s cardinal points and be reminded of one’s priorities.

*

*

 

 

‘Be seeing you?’…

*

“What do you want?”

“Stagnation.”

“You’ll not get it.”

“By hook or by crook we will.”

“Who are you?”

“We are your masters.”

“Not in my name you are not.”

“You no longer have a name.”

– Count Jack Black

Portals…

*

“In the programme…” said the man wearing a green-kilt,

*

*

“…the portal-stones lead to another time.”

*

*

“He’s referring to a tele-vision programme,” said Wen, quietly.

*

*

“And what of the non-tele-visual world?”

*

*

“There isn’t one.”

Walking with Grief…

 

*

‘I cried like some grandmother, I wanted to tear my teeth out, I didn’t know what I wanted to do.’ – Walter E.Kurtz, Apocalypse Now.

*

The ‘Good Colonel’ is here reacting to a particularly distressing, and at first sight vicious and meaningless, act of war.

However, a culture which can organise the systematic removal of the inoculated arms of its children must have a pretty clear conception of where it is at, of precisely what it means to be there, and also of just how to remain in that place.

*

‘Good Grief, Charlie Brown…’ – Lucy, Peanuts.

*

Can grief ever be good?

Charles M. Schulz clearly thought so.

The phrase runs like a litany through Charlie Brown’s debut T. V. outing casting noble failure on all his best efforts, and simultaneously highlighting the noble failure of all life to make any kind of a lasting impression.

Sometimes Schulz talks like a prophet and at other times like a lost soul.

With this particular ‘bon mot‘ he talks like both at the same time.

The meta-gag of this same episode is Charlie’s dream of sending the football soaring through the sky.

It never happens.

Lucy always removes the ball at the last.

It is Charlie who soars… to end… lying flat on his back, gazing up at the sky.

A living cadaver capable of pondering its own plight, and ours.

We have the terms ‘a proper Charlie’ and ‘a right Charlie’ for those unfortunates who end up looking like chumps in life’s Divine Comedy.

Are these phrases ‘Chaplin derived’ or much earlier?

King Charles I of England lost his head, and his life, for clinging on to an outmoded principle.

Scotland’s Bonnie Prince ended his life in ignominy and exile but even before that he was a Charlie.

A clown’s name for a clown’s game?

Perhaps.

That principle?

The Divine Right of Kings.

To do what?

To rule…

To rue the almighty hash the politicians have made of it?

No, not that, simply to rule.

To run the measure over the populace and let ‘the Gods’ or ‘the Fates’ decide, which they do anyway, ultimately…

*

‘Death’s at the bottom of everything…’ – Major Calloway, The Third Man.

*

Stoneland…

*

… “What, not even Stoneland?”

*

*

“Not even Stoneland,” smiles Wen.

*

*

“Pity, they will never know what they are missing.”

*