sunshine in February

Here's a short sequence of sunshine photos. It's an ideal way to spend February and maybe March, trapped in a sunny climate, with at-elbow support to provide refreshment.

I'm still taking all of the pictures on the iPhone, and it is clear that I should have adjusted the aperture on the top one.

On the other hand, I'm wearing sandals on the lounger, at the smaller pool, so what was I thinking?

And an obligatory snap of some palm trees. I had to crop the hot air balloon out of the shot in case it made it look too staged.

Pass the suncream.

Convenient emergency

It was an accident that we witnessed the Trump C-SPAN declaration of a national emergency in front of reporters on the White House lawn.

A rambling speech of over an hour, with many of the reporters sat on what looked like childrens' chairs. That alone reminded me of a tyrant dispensing egotistical pronouncements.

Then the expressions on most of their faces as they attempted to ask questions. A Fox reporter got some answers but most of the others were dissatisfied and in several cases told that they were part of fake news and essentially got nothing.

Whether Trump intends to award the initial $1.3 billion for 55 pricey miles of wall to his own companies or to those of cronies remains to be seen. We'll never know what happens now that he has a pocket attorney general. The man that will probably close down the Muller investigation too.

Trump has normalised a kind of fantasy corruption of politics. Unfortunately we are usually only a few steps behind with similar weather in the UK.

Sharkey’s town

No real chance to take a deep dive into anything at the moment.

We are all too busy having fun around the pool.

I'm using the little iPad as a keyboard again but it is still infuriatingly slow compared with a laptop because the keys don't always register.

There has been another shark in the water too. The double quote mark is different from the one used in html which makes editing picture widths rather labourious.

I'll hammer on with it for this post but may then need to make alternative arrangements.

Meanwhile we have discovered another pool and a chance for a few more minutes tranquility away from the inquisitive stingrays,

the road goes on forever

Sometimes you start out along a road and then it changes character. There's whole novels and movies about this kind of thing.

Part of the trick is paying enough attention and always remembering to take care at any notable junctions.

Our current journey will have those branches and mysterious signposts and we'd be foolish if we didn't stop to take stock and modify our plans from time to time along the way.

snakes and alligators

I could go into extended metaphor mode now, what with the slippery dealings in the UK and the swampy ones across the pond in the USA.

Instead it might be better to ponder upon the physics of a disc world, perhaps with four elephants balanced upon the back of a giant turtle?

But wait.

Here, right in the back garden, is a turtle candidate. Answers to the name "Great A'Tuin".

water's edge

A striking thing about my last two posts is the difference in the degree of tree foliage from one to the next, both within the same day. At least we are moving towards the greener look.

It is, admittedly, harder to tell in these next two pictures alongside the water's edge, relaxing for an evening meal.

keep on truckin'

A quick look at the transport, which should be rugged enough for the planned journey. I'm told that GMC only make trucks nowadays, although this vehicle purports to be of a 2019 vintage.

I'll probably make some more observations about it later, but for now, I'll note that the factory fitted satellite navigation doesn't include maps and will not let you save a current location for future use.

It is, instead, voice operated although it has difficulties handling my variety of English, causing the system to go into frequent loops of incomprehension. I think it is called OnStar. Maybe that should be One Star?

a room with a view

It is always good to have a room with a view. I might prefer seascapes or mountains, but this urban masterpiece is also one-of-a-kind.

filling in between the lines

This time we've headed along a long corridor ahead of our next trip.

Part way along, the floor pattern changed, just like it would in any good spy novel.

In our case it moved from heavily patterned to a light colour with occasional lines.

I suppose it was a hint of the need to fill in the grey areas between the lines?

Anyway.

Part one accomplished.

Next time we should be somewhere different.

time takes a cigarette

Nothing has changed with that flight to Brussels. The 585 page Withdrawal Agreement remains the same as it ever was.

As a face-saver, the Political Declaration can be modified, but let's face it, it's still the equivalent of 30 pages of PowerPoint designed to be vague until after the one-way valve of the Withdrawal Agreement has closed.

What's the old quote "Everything works in PowerPoint."

Meanwhile, our stony-faced knight of the absurd continues to chase the existential ironic.

This other quote is from Albert Camus, talking about Sisyphus: "Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

circle line?

"Immobilise" - my pop art reference to "Release", by Richard Hamilton

As Mrs May continues her Sysiphean route around Europe the next meeting with Donald Tusk should be particularly interesting. I decided that the Botticelli painting of Dante's Inferno might be a little too complicated to represent the recent sentiments expressed.

Instead I was torn between a simplified 8-bit model of the 9 rings, complete with its own railway station or the upstart Onion version from 1998 with its 'special place' extra ring.

I decided that the railway station added an extra border control issue such that, despite its extra level, the expanded 10 level inferno was a better TL;DR* version and could still form the basis of a 'Place the politician' game.

Tempting as it might be, I won't fill in the gaps. After all, it could be seen as falling into a very deep pit.

*TL;DR - Too Long;Don't Read

magic realism

This time I've visited an excellent (and free) exhibition at the Tate Modern. Not a new show, it runs for a year, finishing in July 2019.

Magic Realism explores the aspects of Weimar Republic culture between two devastating world wars. There's themed rooms displaying the art of the period and Germany's search for cultural identity. Sometimes referred to as Neue Sachlichkeit / New Objectivity, it was defined by Franz Roh as a return to order after modern or avant-garde art (Nach Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus).

I knew my German classes would come in handy.

There's a series of rooms, with titles like 'The interior figure of the exterior world', 'The Circus/Abnormal situations', 'Pleasurable Abundance', 'Cabaret' and more. Each space is not overloaded giving a good chance to examine and think upon the themes displayed. By the end we can see an inexorable spiral towards further darkness.

The trauma of the First World War, and subsequent political uncertainty, is echoed by many Weimar artists. There's grotesque and crude pictures and no shortage of ironies. One of the first pictures is by Georg Grosz, stark in its matter-of-factness whilst portraying multiple disturbing scenes.

There's a contrast with the Pleasurable Abundance of the next section. The fuller title would be 'Pleasurable abundance - by means of new technology' - Werner Gräff illustrated modern life with a list of contemporary pastimes: "the amusement park, pleasure flying, jazz bands, elegance, Chaplin, snow-shoeing, world travel now-and-then and, if need be, spas.

However, a picture from this section by Rudolf Schlichter illustrates the contrast. Click that link to see an abundance of his work.
Speedy with the Moon/Frauenportrait(Speedy) 1933.

A careful portrait of his wife, but look behind, not just at the moon. A torn landscape, maybe more representative of the emerging environment than a direct reference to the previous war? Schlichter was one of the many artists later condemned as degenerate by the terrifying politics of mid 30s Germany.

There's a detailing in the above picture not so representative of the general style of magic realism. More often the paintings use an economy of lines and vibrant tones to convey the effect. This crop from Conrad Felixmüller's Portrait of Ernst Buchholz might be more typical.

As an aside, in my ongoing use of iPhone photography I'm noticing reflections and white balance questions, which I'd more routinely fix in raw, but can't so easily on jpegs.

The circus collection provide licence to satirise moral degradations and anxieties. This picture in the Cabaret/Adventure section is by the only woman artist, Jeanne Mammen, and illustrates a shooting range. The foreground plainly dressed woman is handing a gun to the punter at contrast with the voluptuous women targets.

There's so much more. This small exhibition is packed with interesting and thought-provoking pictures. Day-drinking unemployed military veterans. The cage of decadence. Towards Isherwood and the Cabaret movie.

For already heavy back-packing reasons I didn't buy the catalogue at the time, but subsequently ordered a copy to be delivered home.

For now, by way of a bonus track, click anywhere on August Sander's photograph of Bohemians [Willi Bongard, Gottfried Brockmann] c.1922–5, to be transported to a Tate-curated spotify playlist of over 100 Weimar Republic tunes from between 1919-1933.