the solitary walk as work of art
May. 28th, 2007 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radfrac_archiveI asked ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
inlandsea for an atmospheric place to do some writing today, and she suggested the Abkhazi Gardens. What I actually ought to be working on is the last art project on my list, due May 31, but I needed the walk and the writing time.
In the usual feat of fate that accompanies my efforts at finding good writing situations, there was noisy construction going on half a block from the gardens. I went in anyway, which showed excellent mature judgement. I got a discount for arriving on foot. This buoyed my mood. In me you witness the comfortable mingling of high and low.
I didn't use the map as I wanted to discover things on my own. Mostly I discovered rhodos. Many. Bells of white and all shades of pink, of lemon and Easter jellybean mauve and cream.
I sat down by a white waterfall of rhodo bells (imagine the sound of all those white glass bells cascading into the water) and sketched a mysterious flower -- (lj user="xxcaro">?) -- trifoliate, with a deep pansy-purple centre fading to white, and long-tipped, ribbed leaves with a deep central groove. The buds grew in furry clusters, almost cones.
On a less certain path up in the rocky section of the garden, I found a patch of fuzzy rock-crawling something, like a mass of thumbprint-sized green fireworks. Someone had just watered it, and there were tiny shining spheres of water trapped all through the green, like some alien foliage. Red wire-thin stems jutted out from the green with hard yellow candies for flowers.
A bed of white irises with yellow-smudged hearts, and orange poppies growing beside them.
The excellent plant that looks like it's been saturated in dye turns out to be called "cerinthe".
And everywhere, springing up from unlikely places, dauntless elderly women in broad hats and gardening gloves.
There are still stretches of the original paving from 1949, with curving lines cut in and blotches of pink and green. It looks gaudy now, but it must have been very chic when it was laid out for the Princess.
Then the tea shop. After a brief delay, I got a corner table, so that I felt safe enough from maurauding flower cowboys to drink two pots of house blend tea (darjeeling and lavender) and consume a ploughman's and a truffle plate. The ploughman must have been a small one with exquisite taste. The chutney was superb and the local cheeses a delight. The pate was alarming to look at but very tasty.
The truffles were overshadowed by the fresh fruit and lemon slice. Everything a tea shop should be, though I like a little more anonymity in my writing locations. I've become too fussy about these in general.
I didn't, in the end, write much original material. I tried to think what you could set in a garden like that. You could try a murder mystery, but the sheer abundance of rhodos seems to defeat lowly human motivations. A ghost story is better -- young soldiers from the graveyard nearby, though the garden was built after either of the big wars. It's not a place to fall in love, either, or to screw; a graduation ceremony or a second wedding would suit, but it would be hard to have a brawl on tea alone.
Actually, I could see a nice knock-down drag-out, rolling around spoiling the beds and then crashing through the calla lilies into the duckpond.
It really is a duckpond. I saw a duckling in it. Yes, an excellent location for sublimation. Thank you.
I did read a bit of The Love Affair as Work of Art, which I bought solely on the basis of recognizing in its title a tendency of mine: to try to make my amours fit some sentimental arc(hetype), or, failing that, to invent a new one for the purpose. My plots are more complex and less monogamous than most people's might be, and just as unsuccessful. There was a fad say twenty years ago of books for women on how not to expect a knight and rescuer to arrive; I suppose the current market for gentleman transsexuals to be a little smaller, though (from my example at least) no less in need of perspective.
The book particular is about the romantic correspondence of famous French writers. I am enjoying it even though I have never read a word by Mme. De Stael and my knowledge of George Sand is largely limited to the movie Impromptu. Which I loved (crossdressing heroine mannishly woos effete hero. C'mon. It's so very nearly gay.) I read a collection of her travel writings, I believe, in my youth, in Penguin. Portrait of the author on the cover. That's all I remember.
Wait; I might have read an erotic piece by de Stael in a collection about pornography of the era. But it might equally have been Madame somebody else.
Anyway, writers. They try to make life (meaning love) conform to narrative and are disappointed when it doesn't. See Resisting Novels. And we all try to live in movies, o, why didn't I kiss you cinematically on the breakwater with your mouth all salty? Because you would have decked me and I'd have fallen into the ocean and broken my spine. Plus I'd have had to go up on tiptoe.
I think I distract myself with love because losing in love has a certain tragic satisfaction, but losing in the rest of life is just depressing.
I can smell things again! Sunwarmed driftwood. The green blood of growing things. Roses, wild and tame. The very air of spring. I am tingling all over with joy and sunburn.
Time for a nap.
p.s. I fear I am a little old lady in disguise. This love of flowers and tea shops.
{rf}
inlandsea for an atmospheric place to do some writing today, and she suggested the Abkhazi Gardens. What I actually ought to be working on is the last art project on my list, due May 31, but I needed the walk and the writing time.In the usual feat of fate that accompanies my efforts at finding good writing situations, there was noisy construction going on half a block from the gardens. I went in anyway, which showed excellent mature judgement. I got a discount for arriving on foot. This buoyed my mood. In me you witness the comfortable mingling of high and low.
I didn't use the map as I wanted to discover things on my own. Mostly I discovered rhodos. Many. Bells of white and all shades of pink, of lemon and Easter jellybean mauve and cream.
I sat down by a white waterfall of rhodo bells (imagine the sound of all those white glass bells cascading into the water) and sketched a mysterious flower -- (lj user="xxcaro">?) -- trifoliate, with a deep pansy-purple centre fading to white, and long-tipped, ribbed leaves with a deep central groove. The buds grew in furry clusters, almost cones.
On a less certain path up in the rocky section of the garden, I found a patch of fuzzy rock-crawling something, like a mass of thumbprint-sized green fireworks. Someone had just watered it, and there were tiny shining spheres of water trapped all through the green, like some alien foliage. Red wire-thin stems jutted out from the green with hard yellow candies for flowers.
A bed of white irises with yellow-smudged hearts, and orange poppies growing beside them.
The excellent plant that looks like it's been saturated in dye turns out to be called "cerinthe".
And everywhere, springing up from unlikely places, dauntless elderly women in broad hats and gardening gloves.
There are still stretches of the original paving from 1949, with curving lines cut in and blotches of pink and green. It looks gaudy now, but it must have been very chic when it was laid out for the Princess.
Then the tea shop. After a brief delay, I got a corner table, so that I felt safe enough from maurauding flower cowboys to drink two pots of house blend tea (darjeeling and lavender) and consume a ploughman's and a truffle plate. The ploughman must have been a small one with exquisite taste. The chutney was superb and the local cheeses a delight. The pate was alarming to look at but very tasty.
The truffles were overshadowed by the fresh fruit and lemon slice. Everything a tea shop should be, though I like a little more anonymity in my writing locations. I've become too fussy about these in general.
I didn't, in the end, write much original material. I tried to think what you could set in a garden like that. You could try a murder mystery, but the sheer abundance of rhodos seems to defeat lowly human motivations. A ghost story is better -- young soldiers from the graveyard nearby, though the garden was built after either of the big wars. It's not a place to fall in love, either, or to screw; a graduation ceremony or a second wedding would suit, but it would be hard to have a brawl on tea alone.
Actually, I could see a nice knock-down drag-out, rolling around spoiling the beds and then crashing through the calla lilies into the duckpond.
It really is a duckpond. I saw a duckling in it. Yes, an excellent location for sublimation. Thank you.
I did read a bit of The Love Affair as Work of Art, which I bought solely on the basis of recognizing in its title a tendency of mine: to try to make my amours fit some sentimental arc(hetype), or, failing that, to invent a new one for the purpose. My plots are more complex and less monogamous than most people's might be, and just as unsuccessful. There was a fad say twenty years ago of books for women on how not to expect a knight and rescuer to arrive; I suppose the current market for gentleman transsexuals to be a little smaller, though (from my example at least) no less in need of perspective.
The book particular is about the romantic correspondence of famous French writers. I am enjoying it even though I have never read a word by Mme. De Stael and my knowledge of George Sand is largely limited to the movie Impromptu. Which I loved (crossdressing heroine mannishly woos effete hero. C'mon. It's so very nearly gay.) I read a collection of her travel writings, I believe, in my youth, in Penguin. Portrait of the author on the cover. That's all I remember.
Wait; I might have read an erotic piece by de Stael in a collection about pornography of the era. But it might equally have been Madame somebody else.
Anyway, writers. They try to make life (meaning love) conform to narrative and are disappointed when it doesn't. See Resisting Novels. And we all try to live in movies, o, why didn't I kiss you cinematically on the breakwater with your mouth all salty? Because you would have decked me and I'd have fallen into the ocean and broken my spine. Plus I'd have had to go up on tiptoe.
I think I distract myself with love because losing in love has a certain tragic satisfaction, but losing in the rest of life is just depressing.
I can smell things again! Sunwarmed driftwood. The green blood of growing things. Roses, wild and tame. The very air of spring. I am tingling all over with joy and sunburn.
Time for a nap.
p.s. I fear I am a little old lady in disguise. This love of flowers and tea shops.
{rf}
