Stanley Pelter: a rise-and-shine, eyeball-to-eyeball walk

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ridge of cloud
beneath softest of hills
hint of fish

Ridges of Beinn Bhreac, Mullach Buidhe, Beinn Bharrain, unsullied by the permanence of high definition, gently shift dawn mist shapes, follow sea edge curves toward Loch Ranza.

as i walked round lochranza bay .................. music. ‘Le Tombeau de
i met a girl with this to say: .......................... .Couperin’. That dance
“old man. slow down. don’t walk so fast ....... .. motif in the ‘Forlane’
you’ll walk a curve into our past” ................. movement. The scale
................................................................descends, settles into a
she said to touch the rowan tree .................. square. Precision into
and not disturb the rats you see ................... what poise. A homage
drink water from the secret burn ................. to Couperin in Ravel’s
until a rainbow starts to turn ........................ own special language.

Draw nothing seen. Should the invitation be accepted, I wonder? Let’s face it, London is one hell of a long way from all this. Do I want to cope with dress-to-impress, manicured, cleansed, multi-coloured, tapered, slick click-heads, less interested in the work than a gaudy display of halo effects?
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an artists fast walk
a muscular stags landscape
moves the other way

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So why do Duchamp and Léger appear at the same moment as this stag who joins our disparate party in such ways to make it seem one is on the other side of surreal as it passes through where they nearly thought I was going until fast-tracked into my close-up canvas springing alive more vividly than can ever be imagined inside clenching of electric charged fears that change into the monumental shapes of Communist Léger’s impersonal Adam and Eve discharged by a Duchamp randomly selected common object renamed a ‘ready-made’ work of art which can move a bulkily antlered stag from a robust habitat into a masquerade clinging tight to a sea slapping beach?
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cutting-edge artist
a hungry stag eats its way
into their canvas
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Léger stands majestically still. Duchamp, back to the stag, plays chess with his brother, Villon. I scramble over the stone wall. Watch an aspect. Our vantage points disentangle a few connected innuendoes. Stag, head high, calls abrasively. Waits. Calls again. Deeper throat fills. Paws grass. Turns a strong head. So close! Hold back separating breath. Sniffs air. My thinness palls. Moves on, sounding out the tarmac with a hard hoof. Eats more bits of Magritte’s The Beautiful World. Walks through Duchamp’s Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, then joins him in his positive retreat, to a profound solidarity. Antlers appear an ingenious solution to his rutting urgency. Senses a somewhere harem. One paradox to resolve before his galvanised day begins. We have slowed down. On the special occasion of a rise-and-shine, eyeball-to-eyeball walk, we meet as a Rowan tree is touched.

Hidden behind a hedged wall, behind a new noise, curtains pull open. Pink-cheeked men, wearing Victorian dressing gowns, see bits of what is happening. Call. Children gather. Point. Shout. Call. A TV flashes blue-whites that, inside speed, reshape.

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Like a distant dream of distant events, unconnected stories weave onto a canvas that makes an illogical sense of spaces between them. Differences cuddle down for the night. As curtains close, brothers pull down a game of chess that turn out the light. Léger’s heavy forms squeeze inside canvas thinness. Mists still erase the firmest ridges of Beinn Bhreac, Mullach Buidhe, Beinn Bharrain. I watch rats eat the girl who feeds them. He sees a rainbow turn inside out after drinking from a secret burn. Fears begin to untangle. The stag calls an indifferent sound, ambles to weed mingled grass. Feeds .................. I accept the invitation.
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sea covered mist cloud
his oil painted stag stretches
the silence of storks

by Stanley Pelter

Claypole, Lincolnshire, England

first published in insideoutside (2008)