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By Sandshoe.
I remember a green tree frog and the way it impacted my senses in Port Moresby, when I am anyway from a part of the world where green is falling off a log, like night is day, like …
The frog is mine in remembered emeraldness, and I remember the sight at Hidden Valley of the spiders’ webs linking the blades of molasses grass, the entire view on each side of the track other than sky as children and I topped the hill on the climb to the school bus and in the middle of each web was a gleaming emerald green dot, causing a shimmering. Hidden Valley is a outlying settlement of Kuranda where I have sometimes lived in North Queensland.
Yellow is a colour I cannot wear. It shocks me on myself. Anything yellow impacts and takes me to a place I wonder about, yet know nothing of. It vibrates on a bucket and I extract a deep blue bucket instead from a neighbouring stack on a shop stand.
To A Mouse.
On turning her up in her nest with the plough, November 1785.
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle.
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An’ fellow mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t.
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s win’s ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.
That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld.
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
(Robert Burns 25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796)
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
We seem to be getting some great pictures folks.
I love that in ya face combo of yellow and green. I love the on ya face quasi tattoos but I think most of all I like the detroit retro fifties type face. I want a “Wilson” with fat tyres and a muffler that grumbles when it idles.
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Warrigal, it is so much fun to view the drawings, etching, paintings and photographs posted at the Arms. I like your appreciation very much of the yellow and green ‘in ya face combo’ of my contribution. Never thought I would ‘show’ perhaps, least of all in such wonderful companionship as this band of talented and energetic contributors themselves and commenters. Thank you.
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Have you ever done wood block prints, shoe? I could see you making very lovely ones.
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I have not done wood block prints Lehan. A woodwork teacher and cabinet maker I asked to have a look at this and a few others of my doodlings suggested he though could see my style of illustration lending itself to zany painted furniture and the idea at the time very much appealed. Re wood block prints, thank you for this reference because I am interested to now (some time) learning how to do that. 🙂
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I have the odd yellow shirt must admit.
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Shoe, is the art work you?
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Hung, I sat to the task in 1989 of considering what was it about living in New Zealand for by then 6 years that affected me, my self perception, what influence that had on me relative to my being an Australian…fine line pens and felt tip pens at the ready.
I had a friend who had significant disfigurement on his neck from a self inflicted injury, which scarring saddened me and on the other hand the moku of the face tattoos of Maori people had become commonplace visual experience enough for me to have begun to identify with the culture and images… I had become v interested in the many manifestations of damage to/adornment of the skin even including the prevalence in NZ of rough prison tattooing and schoolies using biro.
It is interesting I worked quickly as the ideas began to roll around the subject matter…there is surprising firmness in the lines and the hair is extremely confident and I do remember I worked continuously for some time to conclusion. I would think there is close to three hours here including it being likely dragged with a layer of crayons, sometimes per hair strand. I am the focus of my enquiry even including the bold representation of the ‘colour’ of Australia brought forward out of the background of the fifties Warrigal mentions in another comment on this page, tho’ his reference was about the ‘retro face’.
I was very influenced when I was a child by the colour of the Women’s Weeklies’ photography…vibrant wattles and banksia, orchids, gums on inland NSW tracks…fields of sugar cane, fields of wheat.
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..dye them black ,Hung, yellow is an absolute no-no with RED hair!
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I have just one. It has blue hibiscuses on it. FM insisted I buy it so I’m never lost to her at public events – and safe in the traffic. The Emmlets hate it and won’t walk near me in crowds.
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It looks good on you ,Emm, because your hair isn’t red like Hung’s…
I once bought a yellow Mambo shirt with red roses on it, someone nicked it off the line…
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About the shirt, Emmjay…a friend I spent a lot of time with I never worried I would lose was my singing partner in an acapella group so we had lot of reason to be hanging out together around city streets, through crowded gig locations, in hospitals, all the things that come out of getting each other through to another performance space…she kept her hair pretty well short, jagged, mohawkish, head shaved into patterns but absolutely permanently dyed multifarious colours, blue, red, rose pink, green, yellow, orange…so helpful. 🙂
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Not to worry, Sandshoe,not many people ‘can’ wear yellow; in my books only the tanning, naturally blonds …even then it has to be yellow of the faded kind…
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I had blue eyes and fair-auburn hair that was blonde-red when I was a child…classic little scottish lass…funny I was the only one of four children to take after my Scottish father’s colouring (damn but he had the most incredibly pretty-blue eyes).
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You with your yellow and I with Burns, the ploughman bard!
I can only remember pain and more pain trying to understand him. Back in my 2nd Form, I think it was. Only a few months in Oz and we had this mad teacher from Scotland, whose accent was impenetrable even for the aussie kids and who had this excruciating mania to teach us Burns!
He was the only teacher who made me asked my dad to take us back home to Greece!
Thank Zeus I had shifted to another high school by the beginning of the following year and there were no teachers with impenetrable accents there. It was there, at Strathmore High I began my floruit as a student and a human being.
But, oh, the unforgettable lines,
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,”
Loved your word picture of a frog’s moment, sands! “Green is falling off a log like night is day!” The assonance of “log” and “frog” is exhilarating!
Well done again.
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ato, I start thinking I don’t know what to say. I learn so much from you all the time, let me say you are both one of nature’s kindest gentleman (I confess to bias as well that you carry the same name as dare I say it my father…) and one of the extraordinarily scholarly of gentlemen.
It is an exqusite pleasure to have revealed this young woman I drew in New Zealand 30 years ago to this companionship at the Pigs Arms. I wrote the little piece to go with it just yesterday from a scrap on which had scribbled the bare description I wanted to convey, in something one day…about green.
The extra typo space between the paragraphs breaks up the compact run-on to the description of yellow. Visual layout can be so important trying to anticipate where to break paragraphs, and where I maybe need be bold to create a one-sentence paragraph. The statement about where Hidden Valley is needs EG to be its surrounded by its own space. Lovely location the valleys around the Atherton Tableland in North Queensland. . 🙂
Robbie Burns…aah…I am choked to think I am but a bare ass student as it is. I can’t afford the lessons. I have forced myself to consider looking the Robert Burns dilemma in the eye. My father and brother were Robbie Burns exponents all the way down to dinners and stuff/kilt. I, myself, and I, on the other hand, published ‘To A Mouse’ to ends only of displaying “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley.”
Learned and quoted properly it so sounds beautiful. The pronunciation of ‘gang aft agley’ is very pretty.
🙂 V happy. 🙂
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Goodness, sands, you can sure make a man blush! (But I DO like it, the goofhead that I am!)
Yes, the visual can have an impact, sands, much like the visuals of a dish. However, it’s how the dish tastes that will stay in the memory of the eater, at least that’s what you, as the cook want. You don’t want people to remember the visuals but to forget how delicious your food was. And, while I agree, you should check out the visuals, you should be more concerned with the words and the subject you’re discussing.
I hadn’t noticed the break in the paragraphs but I did notice the colours and where these were placed: in a forest, on trees, on a log, on a frog, on a frock you wear -or wouldn’t wear, on grasses and mosses, in a valley, in a country full of mystery, in spider’s webs. These are all potent images that well and truly transcend the visual structure of the piece. It is they, as well as the sentiments expressed, of course, that remain with the reader.
The last paragraph vibrates with passion and one which stands in contrast to the passion expressed in the previous two. Serenity vs turbulence. Observation vs reflection. Acceptance vs repulsion. Who can ask for anything more in such few words?
The sounds those words make, too, have a fairly strong impact upon that reader who allows his mind’s ear to listen to what he reads. Just like Burns’ “gang aft agley.”
Keep doin’ whatsa doin’ lassie! Ye’r a keen doer!
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