Tuesdays Pepper

I approach Tuesday’s pepper with less insanity than Monday’s peach. I use my favourite canvas ( 36 Fina Cotton ) and treat myself to a morning in green. As it is with things here it’s not a ‘perfect’ supermarket pepper, but it is full of life, it’s wriggly, turning in on itself to look at its reflection underneath. It’s tummy is tight. It reminds me slightly of a Moore sculpture the way its tail presses to the floor like an elbow.

I start slightly cockily and I feel I will have this sown up soon and be home by lunchtime, but as is always the case looking reveals more, things become much more complicated and I think I will never be finished and I worry the pepper will wrinkle and dry out like the peach, before I am done.

In the same way that happiness is felt more acutely once you have been sad so the sunshine is more appreciated after the winter.

( Tom Waits puts it better in his San Deigo Serenade* )

In the UK, when the sun comes out it’s ecstatic, it jollily plays with that, jostles this and sets off red orange butterflies into lime green fields. Buttercups open and petals unfurl and bees bob about. It brings everyone out of their shell and we are grateful.

Here it is lovely when it is sunny, the mini festival in the park feels right, the roller bladers flit through the shadows of the palm trees. But often there is a harshness to it, a brightness that stings the eyes a bit. I think it must be just that its city not country, and I work in the city and play in the country.

So when the sun is masked by mist as it is today, I like it, it makes me feel ok to be inside and working and I guess thats when I am most content. I have tried taking time off in the week, treating myself to a walk here or a sit there but it makes me feel angst. Only in the evening, after some attempt at something, after some effort of some kind, when the boule players shadows are longer does it feel soothing to sit on warm stone and loll. So is it only after work that we can enjoy not work. And only when the both are in the right measurements that I can enjoy life.




* Tom Waits
Never saw the morning till I stayed up all night
Never saw the sun shine till you turned out the light
Never saw my home town until I stayed away too long
Never heard the melody till I needed the song