Some things we do not know how to accept. We may be familiar with our self-inflicted woes, and cherish these simply out of that familiarity. The moment we are handed joy, how do we respond? With disbelief, incomprehension, at best a kind of clumsiness if perhaps we are accustomed to seeing it elsewhere, almost independent of us; but when it approaches, hand reaching out -- it is there we falter; we think: 'You must have the wrong number.'

light

There is a tea light candle on the window sill too small to shine above the wood holding in the pane. From outside it is almost invisible, hidden by the ceiling light, the street lamps, the left-over almost burned-out Christmas lights. But whereas the others shine or glimmer with an unconscious intensity, this small flame glows with intention.

Giacomo Balla (1871-1958)

Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash. 1912.

Noise, speed, movement -- these are words associated with the Futurist artist Giacomo Balla. His work tends to have a strong abstract quality such that the viewer doesn't necessarily recognise in the image any particular familiar object right away -- or if he s/he does, it is brought forth by lines indicating sweeping changes and motion. The painting of motion inevitably seems a bit of a trick, doesn't it? "I shall paint a series of moments within a single frame!" Says the magician. But even film does not do this -- each frame is an individual photo. And yet, isn't this in itself something quite amazing? How do you separate one instant from the moving the river of which it is a part? And then look at the language I've just used -- 'a part'. We partition as often as we can --- of course. We cannot see the whole world in one glance; we see it as a section, or what we perceive to be a section, because the continuity is too blurry, too outstretched to be contained by our eyes; and so we segregate and then try to amalgamate. And thus we pull 'moments' or 'instants' together like a string of pearls and suddenly it's not the movement of a painting that seems so absurd, but its apparent stasis. And yet when we say this, we forget that the painting is not merely a portrayal; it is a record -- not of the thing it represents, but of the motions and strokes that went into its creation. And, of course, it too is constantly changing, some colours perhaps at a greater speed than others.

I wonder if Balla was thinking along these lines as he painted the chain-links on the dachshund's leash four times, along with its (temporal and spatial) matrix. Did he hear it too?

Sometimes it is enough to make a pot of tea. One need not always drink it.