The coachman Vor.

Vor was like a coachman; who adored everything about the role besides the actual holding of the reins. To the dismay and confusion of the few customers who’d climb into the cabin of his coach, prior to discovering his aversion to grasping the reins, they’d alight upon the realisation he was not a advocate of arrival- only of constant departure.

He grew thin and was often depressed, he’d entered his thirties. Some of his passengers considered him mad. Others looked at him, seemed to regard him as if from the safety of a shore, with sad eyes, judging his doggy paddle ill-equipped, foreseeing the inevitable moment his flimsy vessel sank into the shallows. Others thought he lacked application and a attention span, but thought him able still. Out of a charitable nature, they used his service. With patience through tangent after tangent finally they’d leap from coach and landed, rather late and befuddled at their destination.

His career as a coachman came a cropper, the day his two nags (post-departure he would have admitted- at his encouragement) veered off upon separate paths. Much like those charitable customers, whom knew, given enough time their sought for destination would inevitable come, Vor remained sat upon his coach throne, in a ditch someplace or other, and starved.

Vor returned.

“Our demands as far as time is concerned are less exorbitant than those which the heart requires in order to change”



It took many years before the flames that ensconced his home town vanished and only did they do so- when the town became a haven from London. His attic room, the room of his teenage years, consisted of various artifacts of that time, a time barely to his mind comparable to what is generally thought to be synonymous with that tiresomely pined after chapter titled: the teenage years. These artifacts stirred no emotion, no predatory memory lied in wait. The things-merely were just things. No Proustian deluge, nothing.

On several occasions, drawn to the windows on either side of the attics slopping ceiling, Vor considered visiting the sea and the hills. Neither prompted more than a vague consideration of a possible visit, neither commanded a pull greater than sitting on his single bed and reading Proust’s ‘Within a budding grove’ all day.

For all the lack of a desire on Vor’s part to return to memories obtainable in the things in his parent’s attic, he found no such reluctance on account of his memory to remind-to remind him of a girl he knew and was very much attached to whilst living in Brighton- when reading of the protagonist’s plight with regards to Swann’s daughter Gilberte.

Vor the plant.

Vor soaked up London like a plant. He had a suspicion- he had not been living as apparently human beings live. As a consequence, thinking himself more plant form than human being, his moods became brittle. Nourishment, besides those the requirement of a pot plant, he’d neglected.

Vor is dense.

He’d got a headache. A change of tack, he drew himself. He wasn’t particularly interested in himself, but he figured a change would do some good. Within 6 weeks, the walls of his studio were covered from floor to ceiling, with charcoal drawing all higgledy-piggledy. Vor in hindsight, likens the change; to using a door- in place of banging his head against a wall repeatedly….. Hence headache.

He quickly got good at using the door, after many years thump thumping his head, none of its novelty was lost upon him.

Vor repeated the feat, four times a night, until he had to let go of studio.

He readies his head, Vor bored with door.

Orestes.

Detritus

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I sat facing the counter of the café, gripping a white mug of earl grey- attempting to pull my gaze downward towards those audible around me, early on a Saturday evening. My gaze bore a hole in the suspended sign, listing the various teas on offer. Once adjusted to the confines of the space, my lowered gaze alighted upon the two coloured pencils held in the left hand of a gentleman sitting opposite. The motions of his other hand revealed itself to be drawing in a sketchbook. Faint round shapes of varying sizes were vaguely discernable under the lights, like a constellation of moons ever so lightly traced upon the stark pages of the sketchbook. Through glasses blacked rimmed, occasionally his gaze would lift in search of a answer. A flicker of impatience revealed for a moment in a grimace. Two more coloured pencils-added to the others held in the left hand. I gaze around the room, at the counter I watch the suffusion of emotions on display in the staff and customers. The staff, constricted by the bonds of routine, by the need for self conservation, let flicker now and again in their features a play of thoughts. A frown flickers pass like a figure glimpsed in a flame. The customers, atleast temporally freed from the constraints evident in those serving behind the counter, give themselves more willingly. A man changes his mind, returning to the cold drinks fridge he passes a woman. Eye contact, a smile lingers whilst she orders a coffee and whilst waiting for her coffee, stationed to the right of the till, the evening suddenly illuminated with expectation, she waits. The man opposite, continues in the sketchbook- ever so lightly working with his coloured pencils.
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A mannequin is gripped by the shoulders as if a shoplifter, jacket unzipped and deprived of her hands, jacket summoned-a lady awaits standing before a large circular mirror. The mannequin, jacketless stands posed in a position to take off in flight.
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Opposite- sat a couple on the tube. In a white shirt decorated with a grid of thin vertical and horizontal blue lines a man sits, with shirt buttons straining against the inevitable. Resting on his knees, at the ends of two great hairy arms extended from shirt sleeves, two hands locked together, one holding the index and fore-fingers of the other. The head sits on the shoulders like a moai statue on the earth. Large dark passive eyes peer out over purplish hills. I avert my eyes when they start they’re slow journey to meet my own gaze. He raised a paw to softly stop the large rucksack of a tourist encroaching any further. Beside him to the left, what might be his wife, or sister. She has a black curly hair down to the shoulders, thick eyebrows and unreadable small brown eyes. Seeing a infant defiantly sitting in the centre of the carriage at her feet, with chubby legs immobile astride, her whole demeanour becomes that of a motherly little girl.
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studio wall.

A draughtsman's fist exhibition..

Homeless.

Amongst the people eating their lunches sitting on the grass, a man empties the contents of a
Large bag. The possessions on the grass are grouped together, clothes carefully refolded, a crumpled tshirt selected and exchanged for the one worn. Carefully and systematically he takes stock of the items gathered. A hairbrush is picked up and carefully every grey hair is brushed forward until, at either side he adds a flick, framing the face with at the crown a helmet of hair brushed forward into a point and at either side a thicket curling outwards. Afterwards, legs outstretched- he reclined back upon a elbow and immersed in a book he remained in the Late September afternoon sun.

Sunday effort..

A performance.

I was sitting at a table with three others, two of whom I might have been introduced to, the other sitting opposite, amass of curly hair is Patrick, whom I’d just collaborated with in what may have been a ‘performance’ in Oxford’s Christchurch meadows, for four hours no-less. My attention drifted from the conversation at our table. Located right of a woman flossing her teeth, positioned with back turned to a window onto a early Friday evening in Oxford, a old man with a large grey beard, long black coat and blue denim trousers with each leg rolled evenly up-to the shins, sits eating a ice cream from a cardboard cylindrical container imprinted with a procession of cows on its exterior. His eyes are full of glee, he chuckles to himself after each laboriously dragged scoop of ice cream deposited in his mouth. Each scoop starts from the base and moves to the summit, after the ice cream is deposited the process is repeated- steadily moving clockwise, with such content, never more, never less was each deposit. He might do this every evening, a allowance sufficient for a ice cream, he measures each swoop and chuckles, surveying the room with glee another deposit lands and the scoop returns to the base once more of the ice cream dish, ready to excavate.

A hour or so prior, the bells rang out and from his camping stall Patrick got up from his station below the tree and I collected the scattered drawing refuse left pinned amongst the autumn leaves by varying sized stones .. The strangers who had clustered to Patrick’s right on a slight incline for the duration of the ‘event‘, started drawing near and questions regarding fatigue from the ‘performance’ were vaguely answered. I felt relieved
To be left mostly alone in the immediate aftermath, I felt almost unacknowledged, which was fine. I wasn’t all that sure how I fitted in either.

-My preparation extended little further than buying copious amount of charcoal.

-Two thirds in, I abandoned my slab of rocks and creepy crawlies, for residence beneath a tree some 20 meters away. Up-to that point- frustration. I survey the stage, the audience. I drew them from afar, like a Seurat scene, until emboldened I returned.

-I set out, perched upon my slabs of rock and concrete, located on Patrick’s right a aprox four feet away, drawing upon sheets held by a bulldog clip on a cardboard portfolio resting upon the knees and steadied with the left hand.

-The bugs exposed to the light dwelling on the underside of the slabs, lifted to construct a chair, were felt to be crawling upon my person.

-A wasp took to scouring the park floor, its wings disturbing the dust and fragments of dried leaves, after several flights directed at me.

-A intermission in the drawing, crouching, arm extended charcoal in hand, the frantic motions of a large beetle rocking upon its back, legs pumping in the air waylays mark being made until corrected- it scurries away

In the distance was heard:
-The van engine of the grounds-men.
-Dogs and their owners imploring their return, general barking of orders by the sober and the -not so sober.
-Swans?
-Families, tolerating each other.
-Snapping of charcoal stick in hand and spraying of fixative.
-The dull thud of conkers landing in their spiked armoured casing.
-A wasp.
-Patrick’s movements, pauses, notes.
-My steps upon the debris from the trees.
-A cascade of leaves.
-Various sighs on my part.
-Football’s kicked.
-Conversations from the nearby footpath and canal.

-Upon completion(?): If you were ok, you were sprayed with fixative and place upon a pile held in place by a stone. If you were no good, you were disdainfully cast to the ground and held in place with another stone not so much as placed but dropped, preferably larger.

Orestes studies (I held my cloak over my eyes) part two

Orestes studies (I held my cloak over my eyes).part 1