The Hissing of the Summer Cats

Cat diaries: Welcome to the worlds of "Stripes", ferrule and unpredictable and currently living in a garage and "Shadow" living at home but eating and relaxing elsewhere as far as is possible. Shadow is currently mentoring Stripes in learning social skills, manipulating humans and throwing interesting shapes. Their cunning plan has been evolving over the last few weeks resulting in noticeable improvements to their standard of living and well being. Good job cats.

Post Everything

"Yankee go home" there's a slogan I haven't heard in a long time (and in Latin).

"I may have inadvertently joined a cult. I have previous form in this area. Sometimes I doubt myself, then I remember how it actually was."

We're being mindful, focusing, there's regular "exercise", there are still, soft voices. We're encouraged to be steady, stay home, stay safe, don't rock the boat. Consistency in behaviour. Where you are is safe, it's a life boat floating peacefully on shark infested waters. Other people might just be dangerous. Everyone is a suspect. Stay alert, stay vigilant. Never forget ... but find peace where you can.

There's the constant threat, the dark narrative, the unknown, unseen enemy. Real believers believe it's really real, others say it's a construct, a trap and a snare, a strategy from somewhere dark. Other others don't care, they ignore the warnings, they do as they please and flaunt their actions and their disrespect. There are a lot of others. It's a time to bring things down if you can. We balance these with the plight of victims. There are so many victims.

On the sidelines are experts. They seem to argue in clumps of understanding, as experts might. The facts are fluid. They are advisors, they are seekers, they may have their own agendas. There are opportunities sprouting up in the apparent chaos. There is a name to be made, there's money too. They have graphs and models. Their advice is important and to be heeded, but not by themselves. Hit the spotlight and a position goes with it. Well meant heroes helping and spinning. Their words are destined to be misunderstood or twisted by those in power.

It's all a familiar sci-fi scenario, we've seem the film a thousand times. Mad scientists, greedy power brokers, angry mobs, innocent people caught in the crossfire. Now it's real life. Where do you stand? What's the point of standing anyway?

Hope

Hope: We are crawling towards the ancient way of being known as recovery, things may get worse along the way but they will get better. A route of mixed fortunes. I'm choosing to believe this despite the numerous signs to the contrary. All things must pass. Classic themes in literature and life.

Hope: Kindness and creativity. Even in bad times these things stubbornly refuse to go away or die, in fact they often flourish. There is new music, art and writing being birthed and carrying on right now, you just need to be on the look out for it. You can even create your own jigsaw puzzles these days.

Cats as Jigsaws

Via a threaded journey from Orkney Library to the Forth Bridges and some stone balls we came upon JigsawPlanet. Something found that was never being looked for. A strange little (?) site where you can create your own jigsaws and play and mull over those created by others. A fairly normal activity these days and another brief and futile bid at internet immortality. Naturally cats are a popular subject and so we've added more cats to the extensive cat catalogue. That's it really, probably the most significant part of yesterday other than the regular world shattering events happening in an even bigger, never ending jigsaw puzzle.

The wall of the Future

Staring into that bright but fuzzily blank wall that is the future isn't much fun these days. Trips to plan, meals to organize, events,  places to go to and see, meeting up; all things that are still somehow out of reach as our entitlement and privilege moves further away by the day. Looking back on recent history is an equally bland blur of those daily media circus shows and clunky lies of ministerial briefings, political own goals, stupidity and now violence. 

This is quicksand for the mind if your not careful. A dizzy slide into a deep and muddy puddle. There is of course hope. Hope in the shape of small things, slowly getting bigger, more rugged and nimble; maybe even writing up those stories or recording a tune perhaps? Clean out a cupboard even? Rinse the grill pan!

The Potato Sack Statement

Marilyn Monroe wearing a potato sack.

Decoy Art

The weather has broken. There's only a watery sun. It's June but we're not in Oklahoma so no bustin' out. This is a Scottish lockdown. We're staying home. Peering out of the windows. Seeing what can be predicted from those broody, moody clouds that are passing slowly, headed for some random destination out across the North Sea. Slippery. Every so often the optimistic sun peeps out and I scurry to the garden to rearrange some plants that hopefully will grow to create a "display". Not that we're in any kind of competition or race, it's just for those fat little furry bees, ladybirds and the butterflies, creatures that we all have a soft spot for so long as they don't sting. 

We hope that they might survive and so inherit the planet once our shambolic reign is over and we are reduced to dust. They are survivors, but only up to a point. You see clever and industrious as the insects are they are clearly unable to open the seed packets and turn on the water taps so as to create the conditions they actually need to survive. Evolution is a bit of a broken system if you ask me.

"Your use of quasi religious images and feeble plagiarism does you no favours and will win you no friends or fans."  - Well Wishers who know things about art and the artistic establishment.

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My Superstar

A short song* in the key of Courier.

What's boring in the backseat baby? I don't know x 3

I don't know x 3

What's dull about the moonlight baby? I don't know x 3

I don't know x 3

What's wrong if I'm right sometimes? I don't know x 3

I don't know x 3

You're sitting in the backseat and I'm driving this car.

If I move in and join you now we won't get too far.

So I'll indulge your fantasy, my superstar. 

My superstar.

* I was singing this to myself the other day, now I can't remember it. Doh!

You Understood

To be read in the narrative vocal style of Aidan Moffat: 

"I used to be a reasonable person unless I was being unreasonable, you were OK with that, you kind of understood. You knew I found things, well, difficult. My peculiar sleeping habits. The rodents. That was about all we could ever discuss, and the daily menu. I was tongue tied and you seemed to be able to say the things I couldn't quite. I thought that you had all the answers, all the eloquence." 

"Taking a stand or making a stand. The free and fluid thoughts that somehow I was missing out on. I'm not a planner. I never was but you, you were there sitting, eyes bright, thoughts coming thick and fast. I couldn't keep up because you were always seeing things that ... I  just couldn't. i thought it might break me but your strength buoyed me up. So now I'm relaxed, I'm in my safe space, comfortable with what's going on. Assembling garden furniture and irrigating the far corners where the soil is mostly dust."

Black Out Tuesday

More Cold War

Sometimes it's hard to know quite what to make of things these days. As Trump cowers down in his DC bunker tweeting more trash talk I'm at a loose end so I'm posting this, a CWS version of one of my favourite paintings, that being "Christina's World" by Andrew Wyeth. Here's the original:

Mundane Golden Hour

Image by LB.

One of my daughters made this, titled as  "Mundane golden hour". I'm unclear as to the inspiration, maybe that's not too important. Here it is anyway in a golden and green screen shot. Good title.

In the Font of Courier

Ordinary thoughts, mused enlightenments and confused travel recollections take on new forms and meaning when expressed in the font of Courier. One day this internet landscape that we now explore, ponder and abuse will be gone. There will be activists and those eager to preserve the delicate history of it all but, one day the developers will come. It will be ruined and laid waste to in some Biblical kind of way. Will any remnants survive? Not many, just the fonts, the brave new, slightly altered but still recognisable fonts. As for meaning? We no longer seek such a meaningless thing. The struggle continues.

In the Font of Arial

Knowing not why I felt a strange compulsion to delve a little deeper into that mysterious world that had now opened up before me. I found myself in a place called "Lockdown Recovery - Phase 1", a special place reserved only for the actual geographical inhabitants of a land called Scotland. We were to be the first to fly free in a dangerous but necessary experiment or so they said. I confess that I was a little nervous, stepping out, raw and unused into this big space with free flowing fellow travelers, all regimented and safely apart, all fixed and focused on getting somewhere because, quite suddenly we were allowed to. 

I didn't feel safe. Too hot, too hostile, strangely quiet and then there were the "other people". I was afraid. For the first time in a while I was in the flow of the traffic of greater humanity, and it showed.  Advice can be taken or ignored it seems. No masks, chatting with open mouths, too close, not observing, possibly using non-household toilets and crockery, sidling up to others in queues, travelling as far as they liked to their second "holiday home" and justifying this because it was a warm weekend and the electricity meter needed reading. Hmm. I may never cycle to Dalmeny ever again.

Worlds apart: Phase 1 night-vision goggles used in broad daylight reveal the difference and it's almost like night and day.

Andalusian Fantasy

Here's oor hoose stretched and reflected in the shiny arse of a car. It has a rather interesting  and exotic Andalusian quality about it that fair makes me fancy taking the ferry to Tangier or the bus to Cowdenbeath. Most things are, at their edges, more of an illusion than a real thing. Something that's both profound and meaningless.

Grapes

In other news and in alternative and more reasonable universe I'm quite liking how these grapes have turned out.

Other People's Work

For the record and to who it may or may not concern I tweeted this yesterday. It's clear (?) to me that this government's manipulation of strategy and constructions are, all in all, completely self serving and not in the interest of the people of the four countries that make up the UK. This is despicable and irresponsible behaviour. The PM has adjusted and smoothed his own public health strategy to protect his top advisor and so cover up his selfish conduct. Shameful and criminal in my view.

@bbclaurak@BBCScotlandNews@maitlis@Peston@BBCNews@BBCNewsnight

Anybody care about this?

Quote Tweet

John Barclay

@Johnbarclay1

· 4h

Replying to @lokiscottishrap

Does he know that by changing #StayAtHome

to #StayAware to save the #SuperDryGollum he has created possibly the biggest UK political and criminal scandal of modern times?

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Distorted Vistas of the Heart

Spent most of yesterday giving myself doses of good advice by saying things such as "calm the fuck down" and "it's just the usual Tory shit show", but that doesn't really help because I've never actually taken my inner voices very seriously. Time travelling social media coupled with the staccato intervention of random and irrelevant news clips and opinions from unreliable sources drives the day along as if powered by crack cocaine and nitro. Not a safe or useful mix. I'm flipping between the reputable and the untrue, I'm just not sure which is which.

The only easy answer is to plant out seedlings or cook food (not at the same time). You undertake these tasks very slowly and deliberately whilst, in between stirring, mixing and chopping, staring bleakly into those coloured up styles of distorted landscapes and vistas that make no sense whatsoever. The rub being that this is exactly the same as much of the so called real world at the moment. Then, as days pass and you adjust to the speed in that brave new world of redemptive creativity, you can look out for signs of actual growth. 

This is all plausible until you go out for a woodland walk and notice that the trees all have small serial numbers etched into aluminium plates and attached to their trunks and you wonder if: a) you've stumbled into an unused Disneyland back lot or b) this whole thing is just a complex simulation.

A Great Wave of Unbelief

Some say he is a genius but I'm not so sure: I suppose I believe some of what you say happened but I don't believe your explanation of events or the weight you apply to them. In your little universe only your rules count. Your exceptional is exceptional to you but may well be common to the rest of the world. What does normal look like? You are however unable to see or understand that, trapped as you are in that strange, binary world of single minded, simple needs and protections.

As for rules, of course they are wonderful things, guidance is to be admired and good practice encouraged, unless that it these things call upon you do something out with that comfort zone you enjoy, the privilege and the protection natural to your background. By birth you landed in that lucky position where life gave you support, choices and chances most don't have. You don't know any better.

You can't understand restraint, patience and trust. These are unnecessary things in the gilded grandiose prison that is your narrow and affected mind and they'd just get in the way. You have a purpose.  It's never going to be your fault. You float somewhere above it all, the temple of the low man. It's the media, the law, those stupid people, the system, the big clunky structures of governance and those irritating people who disagree with you. Nice way to be.

Someone's Psychedelic Breakfast

Egg and banana pancakes.

Using the golden ratio, which is roughly two eggs to one large banana - so you can riff on that, do the following: Mix the eggs and banana up vigorously into a kind of egg and banana smoothie batter, this may take a little time and some elbow effort but stay with it. Heat up a suitably non-stick frying pan and plop a pancake sized dollop of the mixture in. No need for oil.

Buckle up any nearby saxophone and improvise freely for a few moments. Then turn the pancake, the downside should now be the upside and the upside should now be a pleasant brownish/golden colour. Resume your saxophone playing whilst what was the upside now cooks on the downside. Stop playing and using a fish slice style of implement (please ensure it is free from fish) remove the pancake and place it on a dish. Apply some golden syrup or whatever you like on pancakes. Eat and enjoy. 

My work on earth is now complete, thank you.