There's something I want to say about arms but not sure how it's going to come out. It is generally accepted that this Aphrodite is beautiful but I wonder if, for some people, her beauty comes from her lack of adornment and, more importantly, her lack of arms.

Defenceless, certainly she and that might make her appealing to some appetites. But it is thought she had orginally been looking at an apple that she held up in her left hand just below her eye level, whilst her right hand was resting on her raised left knee holding up her slipping drapery. Add to this that it was thought the statue was intended to be viewed from the right side profile then, to quote my source, the wonderful Wiki, ...'the sensuous juxtaposition of flesh with the texture of drapery, which seems about to slip off the figure, adds an insistent note of erotic tension that is thoroughly Hellenistic in concept and intent'.

So here is our entry to speak of arms and of love and beauty and whether beauty does, or should, matter. I think there's a beauty that comes from confidence, style and negligence. What S would call effortless style. That which does not appear so but which is actually highly contrived. Cue poem, Delight in Disorder by Robert Herrick:

A SWEET disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantoness :
[...]
I see a wild civility :
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

So back to arms, of which Patti Smith is possessed a most beautiful pair, with hands to match. Fascinated by her style and, having watched Steven Sebring's 2008 documentary Dream of Life, I think I detect that negligent contrivance; in her shiney clean shoes and fabulously sensuous arms and hands, and all that happens in between, Ms Smith has created her style.

Rooted in Ginsburg and Blake to mention but two, and still delivering beat poetry, she manages still to beguile her audience. And for the record, I think Ann Demeulemeester has a lot to do with it. Last Saturday evening may have been considered dated and lazy delight, but when she sang this, the audience was transported once again. Look out for those arms on the album covers - I am not alone.

New year resolutions 1976

I will be strong.
I will be resilient.
I will be independent.
The thought of going to pump my tyres,
Will no longer send me to a mirror,
To practice helpless looks.
I will walk into a pub alone,
And buy a drink alone.
Large dogs that run up to me in the park,
Barking fiercely,
Will be sent away - by me.
I will no longer wonder ,
Was it me that almost caused that accident,
I will tell myself - it was him.
When winning at cards,
I will feel no pity for my opponents,
And when losing - I will expect none.
I will do everything to promote my own happiness.
I will not apologise after every argument.
I will not allow people to borrow my books.
When wine is spilt all over me,
I will not be nice about it,
I will not be cowed,
By large shop assistants.
I will be tough.

Well the dog thing still needs some work. But, you know, toughness is hard work, and there's a special feeling that comes from finding that someone has already bought you a drink and that it's there, waiting for you, on the table, by the fire.

The summer of '69

And

Elvis

Presley

was

singing...

Not yet

There will be a time when something safe can be said but not yet...

... in the meantime, Damon Galgut can say something for me.

I remember every accusing word, including my own, like a knife in the guts, like something that has shamed us both. Yet she herself is untouched. Later that same day, for example, Sjef and Paula and Caroline all arrive together to help me. In an attempt to bring down her temperature we buy ice from the canteen downstairs and press it all over her body. She wails and protests but also smiles, look at me, she says, I have a whole team working on me, and in that moment she is angelic again, my coy and flirtatious friend, and the awful exchange of the mornng has disappeared. She remembers none of it, nothing of what is said and done, even by herself. She floats above all the pain and grief and guilt that she's created, looking down on our scurrying and striving. There is a very real element of contempt in the way she treats us now, a quality of mocking laughter at our concern. She is far beyond us all, because she's not afraid of death any longer, which is both her weakness and her greatest strength.
...

It's only now that the full force of what's happened begins to hit him. Until this point he has been constantly in action, at the receiving end of calamity, with no chance for reflection. It's like a hurricane has blown through his life, flattening every structure, and in the aftermath the silence and vacancy are immense.

There is nothing to do, but his body struggles to accept it. He is constantly on edge, constantly prepared for crisis. He sleeps badly and lightly, and wakes long before dawn. The days are empty and he doesn't know how to fill them.
...

His body slows and eventually accepts the aimlessness, but inside, deep down, it's like an engine with a missing part, forever turning over, screaming in the same high gear.

In a Strange Room

Equilibrium

Dip, dip, dip,

my little ship,

sails on the water,

like a cup and saucer ...

Ennui

Working from home isn't all it's cracked up to be...

Miss Mustoe

‘But why are you crying? Now then look, here’s a hanky [her very own], dry your eyes. There, now, take a deep breath and tell me why you’re crying.’

Just to be close to this wonderful creation was overwhelming enough. But to be invited to share an intimacy, a revelation, was too much for a tiny heart to bear as it thumped against its tender ribs. To admit a failing to this most perfect of creatures; how could that be?

Hitherto, I had been occupying the blissful ego-centricity of a four year old who’d achieved her deepest desire. I was at school, in the classroom of my dreams. Before me lay the best that A. & J. Arnold & Sons could provide: wooden animal templates to draw around endlessly, colour in and cut out. Thick, soft black pencils to make strong marks upon soft cheap white paper; paper cut with a ruler from a large roll. Coloured wax crayons, silver blunt ended scissors to challenge soft little fingers.

Alongside the visual stimulation of a brand new box of wax crayons, candle smelling and pristine in their black banded, coloured paper wraps was the feel of them; the texture of the paper wrap, the flat bluntness of their bottoms and the oily smoothness of the pointed end that quickly disappeared as it cack-handedly travelled across paper towards its demise. Inevitably, snapping and hanging in two, held together only by that promisingly protective paper. Then into the box of old crayons, divested of their wrapping (all sense of protection now long forgotten), rubbing alongside other misfits and picking up bits of debris which in turn incorporated itself into the surface texture of the crayon. No longer new, clean, unused, differentiated.

Plasticine went the same way but oh, the pleasure of its malleability; softened with the heat of little hands, colours swirling together until, ultimately, the homogenous mass became brown-grey. Then could the real job of creation begin: the rolling snakes then coiling them round and round as the linseed smell invited its user to drift unquestioning into an inner world.

Towards this bliss had I frequently wandered away from my home. I would fetch up at school, knowing the way full well as it was a daily chore to deliver and collect my older sibling. I’d glimpsed that world and I wanted it, so with no conscience off I went to get it.

Poor exasperated mother who, missing her child, had several untimely trips to school to retrieve the unconscionable creature, until the obvious dawned on the dim adults: If she keeps running away to be here, why not let her in?

And so I entered Miss Mustoe’s ordered world: pictures on the wall, little wooden chairs just the size of my bottom and the smell of scrubbed bare floorboards. Hum of contented children, innocently occupied beneath Jesus’ beatific Anglican gaze; suffering the little children to come unto him. (It was a drunken Irish Catholic priest who taught us that, in fact, Jesus had done the suffering and it was our miserable sinning had caused it. Ah the joys of comparative religion.)

But Miss Mustoe, how I loved that woman. Crisp striped cotton shirt, buttoned to the neck of its stiff rounded collar and always, always in place of a cravat, the knotted gold chain. Frequently as I listened to wonderful stories, my gaze rested on that knot, musing on how she could have fastened it so tightly against the collar button. Fully-fashioned seamed stockings emerged from neat brogues, polished like new conkers, to disappear under the neatest of neat grey flannel skirts; a skirt, the colour of her short iron-brushed hair, with a rear kick pleat, which skimmed her ample hips and followed the line of her legs as she calmly commanded her orderly classroom.

How could I tell this creature my horrible secret? The knowledge that gradually seeped into my consciousness as the usual humming routine of the morning was disrupted. One by one my fellow tadpoles were called up to ‘Miss Mustoe’s table’. There they each were sat upon a special chair, and one by one, handed a book into their own hands. Worst still, their grubby little forefingers were being guided along lines of words in that book and their lips were moving! Their lips were moving!

As I stood before her, ‘I can’t read’ eventually escaped from my lips, along with the miserable recognition that life was changed forever, that my entitlement to enjoy the benign countenance of that wonderful woman was lost, never to be recovered. But of course it was recovered, swiftly, as Miss Mustoe smilingly gathered me onto the grey platform of her lap and, with the back of my head pressed against her stripy bosom, she placed a book into my own hands, picked up my forefinger and guided it towards the first word. What indescribable joy did that moment bring. I sometimes wonder if Miss Mustoe was one of those spinster teachers who lost her love in the Great War. I’d like Miss Mustoe to know what she gave me that day.