Archive for April, 2008
I’ll turn the ocean upside down.
April 20, 2008
Robert Desnos and Kiki de Montparnasse, still from Man Ray’s L’étoile de mer, 1928. Watch the whole film here.
‘There Is a Star in the Sea’
(Pliny, Natural History, Book IX)
by Dan Chiasson
‘There is a star in the sea, and it burns up everything
it touches. Though men who walk on land deny it,
one night a star fell from the sky and landed in the sea.
It had the good sense to become a fish, but the wit
to keep its shape. It sleeps on the bottom of the sea,
but one day I’ll play a trick on it - I’ll turn the ocean
upside down! Then it will shine again, coral bluff,
rusted galleon in the night sky, and I will pray to it.’
From Dan Chiasson, Natural History and Other Poems.
Bananas are red.
April 6, 2008
I’d seen The Blue Planet before I moved to England and was amazed by it, but since my friend A. made me aware of Sir David Attenborough, I’ve been the most faithful fan. I haven’t missed a single episode of Planet Earth, Life in the Undergrowth and Life in Cold Blood.
To watch him kneel or lie in the sand, windswept, donning khakis and a light blue shirt, whispering and pointing to explain to us even the creepiest, crawliest, slimiest creatures with genuine enthusiasm and passion, is simply awe-inspiring. He reminds me that ‘curiosity’, etymologically, is associated with ‘care’.
For two weeks in autumn, I purchased every issue of the Daily Mail (with a slight feeling of guilt, because it’s an appalling newspaper) - and if I couldn’t, for whichever reason, I terrorised E. to do so - to collect single episodes of all the Attenborough series on DVD.
And then, last Wednesday, I had the opportunity, between two meetings in London, to squeeze in a visit to The Queen’s Gallery next to Buckingham Palace to see Amazing Rare Things, the current exhibition of natural drawings from the Royal Collection co-curated by Sir David. Get past the airport-style security and don’t be unnerved by the muffled, repressed atmosphere (I had to sneeze at some point and felt like a terrorist) - and it is quite amazing.
The deep, saturated, velvety red of Maria Sibylla Merian’s Branch of banana tree (Musa paradisiaca) with caterpillar and moth (Automeris liberia), c. 1701-5, still haunts me.
