The nostalgic black pigs that haunted every sensitive childhood down there. Confounded letter 13
By Ken Simm
- 1291 reads
It upset me to find that the bear legend had not been born. Born to be Roman. In the west or anywhere else. That was my site for pig ghosts, the pestering sun. The ghosts of black pigs fed on cardboard running through the houses late on certain nights of time.
With post mortems of everything and everyone's voices given full salute when depression sets in like a dull storm of slanted pig raining.
Depression education was and is important because only when you discover can you dismiss with impunity. With that being what we did. All the unexplained monsters under the bed and down the dark lanes. Regretting nothing, gaining nothing, achieving and understanding, but still wondering when it comes around again.
Carbon tree ferns found on slag heaps and burning the carpet in front of the open fire used to dry the washing. Why were they called maidens? Keeping the petrified trees in a pill bottle that was never used for anything else. Collections of pyrites fools polished and shelved. A magazine book of birds. Collecting nature as a school prize to applaud an essay on loneliness. Why don't you draw it? They said. Why don't I understand it? That was the start of wanting. That was the end of really hoping.
Find the cycle of legend and make its sense in visual terms. Paint the true round table, silver shadow across the water. Fish every Summer when they were long lifetimes of light and timelessness, with big head and plate face.
Add the light of reasonableness to the things that are red read ahead of all the others. March with half a million to continue what you detested. Hide while you read. Always keep them secret from those who refuse and want only to give strange names to their children.
Kingfisher sat on your toe. Weasel ran along your fishing line on a simple raft in a clay brick pit. Grebe and damselfly mated under your acid eye. These are the moments of tranquillity. Given your choice of course, of course. Using ammunition boxes nailed together as a boat whilst others sank it in spite
Find a plastic bag full of Healthy and Efficient playing of volleyball and hide it for future reference under the floor boards of next door's Saturday. Take them to the bathroom or under the hawthorn edge hedge with lots of pricks.
Walking with a wet cane through wet grass, down tight trousers to beat up the bloody sorry bullies meeting in a club under the trees. Oh, how we cried when the eccentric built his car from hardboard and that was the only reason he was your friend. Oh, how we cried when father beat for beating the bloody bullies. Bloody. He cried and I cried and we both moved away from friendship into distrust and ambition. Later into what we hoped was creativity or the uncertainty of new belief and a kind of happy clapping..
Brass bands played and milk tables held metal churns. Shops sold Spanish and Kaleidoscope powder in the corner of a paper bag for half a coin. No one would understand the highest pleasure of this nostalgia, now would they?
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