The Butterfly Effect (from behind)

Yesterday, from the tube - the District line - where the train runs over-ground near Wimbledon Park - I spotted a man in his back garden, kick his dog. A Dalmatian. At first-sight - from the rattling train – I didn’t see it right; a foot connecting with a blur of black and white: I think: he’s kicking a football. The sign adjacent to the emergency button (in the carriage) said: ‘penalty for improper use’. Was reporting a dog being used as a football, worth the risk of a penalty?

I hit the emergency button on the London to Dover train a couple of weeks ago. I was in the toilet and I always flush train-toilets with my foot… sort of kick it. But as I'm poised on one leg, about to flush, the train rocks (points?) and I fall onto the help button. Next thing, a voice comes from a concealed speaker, “This is the driver. Do you need assistance?”

‘To make a work of art that doesn’t look like a work of art’: the lines (tracks, designs?) on First Great Western’s train seats are very Duchampian. Do they record the contours of the journey? I’m thinking of Duchamp’s “Three Standard Stoppages”, whilst, with my toe, tracing the line I’m taking - through time (a timeline?). Back to the dog-kick: to be affected but feel unable to effect a change. A family once lived in a shoe. I live life in a sock - a sock the size of a body bag. Permanently 'socked' - always on the hop - another skin between your own skin and everything. How do you kick a sock that size, off?

This morning I drew the curtains to see the biggest butterfly I’d ever set eyes on - gigantic, on the grass beneath the tree in the garden - its bright-coloured markings comprehending the sunlight; I ran for my camera: I’m an artist but I love to connect with my amateur-side. And what barmaid’s arm wouldn’t benefit from a papillon tattoo? I can make a tracing from the photo (there’s this tattooist on the Fulham Road…)

I’ve got a chime hanging in my window; some days it looks like a UFO but today it’s more like a halo. As I’m framing the butterfly through the halo the boy who lives next door runs out into his garden, kicking a football around. The noise and vibration of the ball ricocheting off the garden fence seems to have no effect on the butterfly, it doesn’t flap a wing. I zoom in.

It is indeed the biggest butterfly in the world. I’ve discovered a new species: and when you do that you can call it after something; name it after yourself even. I’m not dressed yet, so I put on my brightest coloured socks - (attractive socks?) and social worker sandals - in the hope of attracting the enormous creature onto the end of my foot. Not to kick it: for a close-up shot.

But when I am up (down) close, when I’m analysing it like a social worker, the butterfly says: Brazil; Portugal; Tunisia; Mexico; Korea; England – 2006. This butterfly didn’t shed its caterpillar skin; this papillion’s a species of dog-eaten football (‘The Shot-Spotted Butterball’?). So I can kick it after all.

I collapse near Dover whilst kicking a toilet, causing a man to kick a dog near Wimbledon Park, causing a dog in Putney to chew a football to death, causing a butterfly to be born of the dead skin: The Butterfly Effect (in action, von hinten)? 

A Mugging In The Country

So you spend your birthday alone. What do you do? You go for a walk on the hills. Walking and thinking go together: I’m alone with my thoughts. Mugging, and ‘being in the country’ don’t go together. So when, out of the blue, I’m knocked to the ground - mugged - on my birthday by a stray party-balloon - someone else’s birthday balloon at that - it’s not a happy birthday. 

I'm stood still, on the top of a hill, trying to photograph a sheep when, without warning, I'm attacked from the sky (an air raid?). It came from behind. Funny, von hinten (from behind) are the only two words of German I know (other than yes and no). Yes, an air raid - von hinten: I get a happy-slapping on my birthday from a balloon out celebrating some far-off stranger’s birthday!

After the attack - which leaves me flat on my back - the balloon hovers me. I'm pinned to the ground in its shadow, a shadow of indecision: is he going to mug me again or what? But as we regard each other (a couple of rear-regarders alone on a hill) from a safe-distance, I get to thinking: this is the only real contact with another breathing thing (he's full of gas and air - he breathes) I’ve had, and am likely to have all day. With this, I'm on my feet, arms (and legs) wide open: I call-up to the balloon (in English), “Come back down. Take me again. I’m ready for you this time. It’s my birthday.” 

But my desperate plea only seemed to frighten the mugger away; he climbed even higher into the sky. So I address him German. “Von hinten again, if that's the way you want it, I don't want to see the back of you. No. I do. Yes. Let's be rear-regarders, but…come back and take me”. 

Higher and higher climbed my rear-regarder, further and further – off - up into the blue. But the sheep I’d been trying to photograph, she clearly speaks German: upon hearing “von hinten”, she bolts for the woods.  

I watch my happy-slapper rise, until he becomes no more than a tiny dot, like a pinhole in the blue sky of a postcard (once pinned to a wall, but now released, yet forever scarred  - holed; marked like Jesus - he came down an mugged us, only to ascend again and watch over us). What a strange thing it is, when someone who has had such an impact on you - has been so large in you life - suddenly departs, and you're left watching them become smaller and smaller. There's not that much space between closeness and distance.

My mugger may have been full of hot air, but he was no mug: my mugger was a flaneur: a flaneur of the byways of the skyways. No, my mugger was one balloon that knew his Baudelaire: “But the true voyagers are those who move simply to move – like lost balloons! Their heart is some old motor thudding in one groove... Let us depart…when shall we set sail for happiness?”