Magnolia

Welcome to the Saturday Blog, so much better than watching paint dry! 😉

When it comes to interior decor, and in particular painted walls, I'm told that fifty shades of grey are 'in' at the moment. Trade names like "elephant's breath", "polished pebble", "stonington", "goose down", "rock salt" and "cloudburst" are leading the way to greyness. I don't have any painted walls, they're all papered, but if I did I wouldn't choose grey! It seems to be achieving the ubiquity that was once the preserve of the mighty magnolia.

Ah, magnolia. From its introduction as a paint colour in the 1950s, its inoffensively pleasing neutral tone of cream with a hint of pink has proved the surprising long-stayer. It really came into its own in the 1980s and 1990s almost as a reaction to the sensory overload of the previous decade and a half (all those purple and reds, oranges and chocolate browns, electric blues and lime greens - I know I was guilty). Millions of gallons of it have been brushed or rollered onto the walls and ceilings of new-build houses and flats, for-sale conversions, offices, student halls, social housing projects and dingy bedsits as a kind of default setting, a blank canvas against which any sort of furnishings would not look out of place. 

For twenty years it seemed magnolia was everywhere. It reigned supreme. (There was even a movie, not to mention a raft of songs.) Its success was partly to blame for the contempt in which it came to be held by many in the interior design world in the 21st century and yet it hangs on in there, on the paint charts and the shelves of DIY stores in defiance of the fad for grey. A few cowardly paint companies have retained the colour but renamed it 'pampas' or 'buttermilk' so as not to offend, while the likes of Crown and Dulux hold firm, and one fairly recent arrival, specialising in 'eco paints' is fuelling the resurgence with its bold "retro 50s magnolia" offering.

Wikipedia is interesting on the subject of magnolia - the plant for which the paint is named - after warning that it is not to be confused with Mongolia (a possibility that hadn't occurred to me). So called after the French botanist Pierre Magnol, it is an ancient genus of flowering trees dating back at least 95 million years, before the emergence of bees, when it would have been pollinated by beetles, hence its extremely tough carpels. It is indigenous to South-East Asia and North America, what we would term a disjunct distribution, but possibly an indication that the two continents were a single land mass in the distant past. Or course nowadays magnolias - and there are over 300 different varieties - are found all over the world. I have a fine specimen growing in my front garden, though its flowers are purple and not cream with a hint of pink. The first flowers appear in April before the leaves open, and if I'm lucky, the tree will flower twice more during the year. I love the shade it affords and the scent.

'Magnolia Tree' by Paula Cox

Many girls have been named Magnolia, not that I've ever met any, though I imagine the figure sitting quietly reading in the illustration above could be one such. And the wonderful J J Cale penned a song to another, as you can hear by clicking on the this link: Magnolia

I leave you at the end of a noisy afternoon in the jewel of the north (it has been day one of the annual Blackpool air show) with this latest poem from the imaginarium.

Night Messenger

Subtle fragrance 

of moonlit magnolia

not as sweet as jasmine 

nor sour as earth

penetrates this midnight hour

and the birth of dreams.

Orchestrating Hermes 

often liveliest of Olympians

stands shadowy now

at the doorpost to sleep

deftly conducting 

we drowsy mortals

through the portal to lands

rich in our imaginings.

A scented breeze flutters

between bedroom shutters

cools a sleeping face

stirs thoughts of a smile

bits of twig in your hair

grass stains on your dress

cream with a hint of pink.

I read your eyes.

It always begins like this.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Running Sacred

The title of this Saturday's blog is meant to induce a double-take. Yes indeed, running not scared but   sacred  - though I have to confess that it's not an original play-on-words. I owe it to Exene Cervenka's 1990 solo album of the same name; (thanks Exene, one quarter of famed LA punk band X). However, I think it's a perfect description of Hermes, main subject of this week's outpouring.

That's Hermes as in 'Messenger of the Gods', not the handbag manufacturer. (Sorry if that disappoints, ladies - though the Parisian company was named in recognition of the satchel that Hermes used to carry his dispatches in.) His other epithets include the boundary-marker, the ram-bearer, the trickster, the stealthy. He was a son of Zeus, second youngest of the Olympian Gods; and in addition to his satchel he was famed for his winged sandals, winged cap and winged staff (or kerykeion), all of which are evident in the depiction below.

Hermes (left) being dispatched to Earth

Young Hermes, because of his parentage and duties, was able to move freely between heaven and earth. By day, in addition to running sacred as divine messenger, he was also, by virtue of his constant mobility, the god of boundaries, roads, trade, commerce, travellers, herdsmen, heralds, thieves and tricksters - quite a portfolio. He was well-known as a guide and guardian to both Gods and mortals and a bringer of good luck. He was the divine ally of the Greeks in their war against the Trojans and a particular protector of Odysseus.

By night he was the god of social and sexual intercourse, a 'conductor of dreams' and he also served as conveyor of souls to the underworld. Then in his spare time, he invented the lyre (thereby inaugurating the entire lyrical tradition) and many types of sport - running and wrestling among them - which led to him being revered as a patron of athletes and the Olympic games.

As such, Hermes richly deserves his standing among the Olympian Gods in the Hellenic hall of fame. He is one of my favourites, a mercurial and complex character and one of the most enigmatic of divines as well as being the precursor of magicians and jokers.

Over millennia, it is in his role as messenger that he is chiefly regarded; and it was perhaps inevitable that he would feature on Greek postage stamps (as well as those of many other countries) in the pioneering days of modern postal systems and airmail services.

Greek stamps featuring the winged messenger

I've blogged about the exploits of Antoine de Saint-Exupery before and I retain a fascination for the man, his heroic feats as an early aviator and the beautiful books he wrote, by far the least among which is The Little Prince, the work he is most famous for.

An aristocrat whose passions from a young age were planes and poetry, St. Ex became a fearless pioneering pilot on the early Aeropostale routes between France and its West African colonies from Morocco down to Senegal (and later down the spine of South America).  I'm sure at times he felt that, like Hermes, he was running sacred with his cargo of airmail correspondence, moving faster and more freely than any mortal before him between 'civilisation' and the outposts of the French empire. He navigated by sight during the day (following the coastline of West Africa for the most part) and by the stars at night in aircraft that could prove unreliable and in conditions that were often wildly unpredictable.

As he wrote in his wonderful books, such a trail-blazing lifestyle truly was living on the edge and his brushes with mortality were many. I like to think that Hermes, god of roads, commerce and heralds, was keeping a benign eye on Saint-Exupery's endeavours - as a kindred spirit - and interceding with the fates when required.

Night Flight of the Airmail

My latest poetic effort is in tribute to Saint-Exupery and I need to preface it with a quote from Stuart Gilbert (who translated St.Ex's early works Southern Mail and Night Flight into English):

"Any fool can find his way, a poet alone knows how to lose it"...

Wing/Prayer
Fragile yet complex as a sycamore vane,
spiralling to ground through Andean cloud
somewhere between starless heaven and hell,
I try to haul this stubborn plane out of another dive
for the love of my life and the precious mail.

The factors which most age a man
are baldness and weight - maybe inconstancy too,
though that's hard to tell from a passing glance.
At least up here I am weightless,
flying-helmet close-fitted to my thinning scalp.

In wrestling with this recalcitrant Latecoere
I put out of mind your latest blatant affair,
momentarily consumed with concentrating skills
and muttering a prayer on the off chance
as I manage to climb once again on shuddering wing.

I am contracted to bring orders to commandants,
love letters to lonely hearts at the continent's end,
so like a latter-day Hermes I wend my aerial way,
quicksilver messenger first, man second, happier by far
to be plying these strange skies where I feel free

than facing up to earthbound miseries, unfaithful acts,
the physical toll of growing old. And when it falls
time for me to tumble from heaven's grace*, let me trace
my passage to the underworld in a blaze of glory
that I should be remembered thus, forever bright as air.

*Antoine de Saint-Exupery died as he would have wished, in a plane crash, in 1944. He was barely as old as the century. "When your gods die, you die," he had written in Citadelle, "for you live by them." So it proved.

Thanks for reading, have a good week. S ;-)

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Mars: Bringer of Tor

Aphrodite sat on the concrete steps, dangling her neatly arched feet into the milky spume from whence she came. Beneath the ubiquitous brine, Uranus lingered still - salty with a trace of zinc. This is where she came to revitalise. Infidelity had its charms but one too many Mona Lisa smiles had left the first traces of corvid footprints around her eyes. The goddess's fountain of youth wasn't what it used to be. If you listened carefully to the waves they'd tell you they felt a bit sick. The tide would pull down its lower eyelid and point to the dirty flesh, asking if it looked pale. Aprhodite weighed her right tit critically in her hand. Strictly speaking, it shouldn't rest on her palm like that. It certainly shouldn't spill over the edge. It might be time to head back to Paphos soon. The all-pervasive grey which dominated this landscape seemed to be sapping her colour, draining it from her body and feeding it into the brash glass structures which shut out the stars.

Hot, wet breath on the back of her neck alerted Aphrodite to the arrival of Setanta, the loping Irish wolfhound. The beast lapped at her shoulder briefly before sitting beside her. Ares whistled provocatively from the top of the steps but both goddess and dog ignored him, forcing the god of war to make his way down the steps. He continued to whistle to himself as he stood behind Aprhodite who smiled as Ares nestled his legs against her back so that she could feel his excitement against the back of her head. Aprhodite lifted her arms up to each side of her head and Ares pulled her up to her feet, spinning her round to face him and pulling her close so that he could taste the primal essence of his ancestor on her lips.

Minutes later the couple were between the sheets in the grotesque architectural anomaly known to locals as 'The Palace'. Here Hephaestus dwelt with Aprhodite in a doubtful arrangement which was part marriage, part transaction. Jove, Zeus, Jupiter. Whatever you called him, Aprhodite had daddy issues. The issue being that she'd rather he didn't see her as a convenient way of saying thank you:

Daughter or thank you card? Daughter or thank you card? Oh, go on - have my daughter. You earned her.

No.

Aphrodite, being a sensible goddess, reacted to this indignity in the most appropriate manner. She screwed Ares, god of war, at every available opportunity. She did so in Hephaestus' bed, beneath his own roof, just in case there was any confusion about her allegiance. She bore Ares 5 children. Or was it 6? After the third birth she'd stopped keeping track. Offspring also seemed to attract the footsteps of the corvidae.

Aprhodite giggled breathlessly beneath the excitable Ares as they attempted to recreate the dance of a pair of sparring swans. Even infidelity requires an injection of spice occasionally. Just as Ares was attempting his masterpiece move, which involved arching backwards to touch his toes so that he resembled a horny doughnut, a thin layer of incredibly fine fabric fell upon the couple, trapping them in their exotic embrace. Hephaestus pulled the magical net in tight around the couple and declared that he was taking them to the Winter Gardens where their shame would be revealed before the clan.


Ares tried to reason with the cuckolded Hephaestus but the miffed god was having none of it. Aphrodite was his play thing. Zeus said so. She was supposed to play with him whenever he liked and he didn't want to share. The crafty artisan dragged the sweaty pair through the town centre and into the Winter Gardens. He ignored the cheery greeting from Hermes on the door and stomped into the Olympia Exhibition Hall where Zeus was presiding over a busy antique market. Hephaestus dragged his cargo passed a table where Athena was haggling with a strident elderly lady over a bronze buckle. He ignored the indecent comment from Apollo who leaned back in a plastic chair, surrounded by over-priced lyres and tuneless guitars. Zeus was enjoying a brew and a Garibaldi at the back of the hall. A bubbly nereid was offering to top him up when Hephaestus dumped the net containing Aprhodite and Ares on the floor in front of him and demanded that the pair be punished for their disgraceful behaviour.

A giddy bout of laughter moved around the hall as gods and goddesses caught on to the situation. Thighs were slapped and eyes were dabbed and none laughed harder than Zeus himself. Hermes wandered in for a chuckle and Apollo shouted over, "Hermes! How much would you pay me to tie you up in a net with Aprhodite for half an hour?" Another ripple of laughter spread around the hall and even the stingy old woman chuckled. Meanwhile, Ares and Aphrodite were growing a little bored of their role in this comedy and Ares looked to his mate, Poseidon for assistance. The old earth shaker had a quiet word in Hephaestus' shell-like. Told him to set the pair free before anyone got upset. Promised to 'make it right'. He pulled rank. Hephaestus released the nude deities with no small amount of grumbling.

The lusty lovers retreated to their respective temples for a little pampering and adulation. Aprhodite simmered in a hot bubble bath. Grace A was putting the kettle on while Grace B picked out something snazzy for the evening. Grace C hummed to herself while applying a conditioning treatment to the ends of Aphrodite's hair. The goddess' perfect toes turned the hot tap back on as she relaxed. With a single malt whisky in one hand and a holiday brochure in the other, Aprhodite laughed.



Image from: http://www.amounderness.co.uk/blackpool_winter_gardens_entrance_church_street.html

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