Apple Weather

[rejectomorph]

The Saturday paper arrived this morning, bundled with the Sunday paper. Don't be getting the wrong idea; This was not a tryst, nor the result of any sort of conspiracy. It has happened because the guy who delivers the paper crashed his car Saturday morning before reaching our house and was unable to complete his route. Thus, for me, yesterday's news is as fresh as today's. I now have a front-page color photograph of Mount Saint Helens in eruption! Furthermore, I found out that a second volcano has erupted, this time in the west coast Mexican state of Jalisco! I have read an obituary for Richard Avedon! All these things are evidence that the Earth is about to split in two! Well, maybe the last one isn't, but the two volcanic eruptions surely are.

A large photograph of the pompous Larry Ellison (microphone and crib notes in one hand, the fist of the other hand raised in a threatening manner, a smug smirk peeking from within his oddly trimmed facial hair) occupies much of the first page of the business section, leading me to think that perhaps the impending destruction and dismemberment of the planet is not an entirely bad thing. How marvelous a thing is the news a day late! I think that, from now on, I shall always save my papers unread until they have had time to age, and get a bit gamy. News, like lasagna, is better as leftovers.

I mentioned apples in the subject line, didn't I? It is cool again tonight, and is the season for harvesting apples, and soon the cold will be making us apple-cheeked, and thus this week's...



Sunday Verse

Picasso Goes For a Stroll

by Jaques Prevert

On a thoroughly real plate of round porcelain
sits an apple
facing it squarely
a painter of reality
tries in vain to paint
the apple as it is
but it's not inclined to submit
it's got a mind of its own
and more than one pippin of a trick up its sleeve
that apple has
and there it poses gyrating
in its real plate
slyly on its own core
blandly sitting tight
and like a Duke de Guise who assumes the disguise of a gas light
to evade certain persons trying to do his portrait despite him
the apple takes the guise of a lovely fruit in disguise
and it's only then
that the painter of reality
begins to realize
that in its every appearance the apple is his enemy
and like the wretched starveling
like the poor pauper who suddenly finds himself at the mercy of
  some philanthropic and charitable association formidable in its
  philanthropy charity and formidableness
the wretched painter of reality
suddenly finds himself to be the pitiful prey
of an endless horde of associations of ideas
And the apple in its gyrations calls to mind the apple tree
paradise on earth and Eve and finally Adam
a sprayer and espalier Parmentier's potatoes or an escalator
Canada the Hesperides Normandy the Reinette or the Lady
the snake with the brandy glass the rake in the Garden grass
and original sin
and the origins of art
and the Swiss with their William Tell
and Isaac Newton to boot
grand prize-winner at the Galactic Gravity Fair
and the painter with reeling brain feels his model disappearing 
  into thin air
and falls asleep
It's at this very moment that Picasso
Passing by there as he does everywhere
day in day out always right at home
catches sight of the apple and the plate and the dozing painter
Imagine anybody painting an apple
says Picasso
and Picasso eats the apple
and the apple says Thanks
and Picasso smashes the dish
and goes away grinning
and the painter yanked from his reverie
like a tooth
finds himself alone again facing his unfinished canvas
with in the very midst of the broken crockery
the terrifying pips of reality

-translated by Noelle Gillmor

Comments

[waning-estrogen.livejournal.com]

oh! this goes so nicely with my apple and the silly watercolor effects of the editing software and my new apple machine, that renders the yummy apple into picasso-esque pieces. I just may have to make a webpage of it all together - gawd, my mind is really bizarre sometimes. must not be making all the synaptic connections this morning. but I don't see blue sparks and can't hear the zzzzzztt sounds. it must be caffeine deficiency.