Medlar - Mespilus germanica
Plot B - 5th May 2013
Field Study's Man in E17 loves a fruity myth and on finding out the tree (featured above) is a medlar, he delved down into the ground, and in amongst the roots of the mythical fruit tree he found a source of an imagination more wonderfully and etymologically scatological than his - one rooted in "a certain gaiety of mind pickled in the scorn of fortuitous things". The field student is dilettantish, a poseur and would have you believe he is well versed in the risque rhymes and dialectical forms of Rabelais. Of course he is not and even the least astute of you, I imagine, can see through this barely concealed gourdy strut of bogus cultural perspicacity. But let's let the dick pretend and allow him the fantasy he will, by imbibing of the flesh and juices of this unfortunately fertilised plant, become an even bigger dick; a Rabelaisian giant he might be.
We - ok I might wonder if the field student has the horticultural skills to grow a gourd 'as long as a jousting lance or the mast of a ship'* - given his gaiety of mind not so much pickled but roasted by the talents of others. The field student has had the good fortune of having worked for, and played with, the Rabelaisian talents of Mandinga Arts - to which there is a link here. In the gallery there images of carnivalesque sculptural phallic costumes.
There are several gourd seedlings very nearly ready to plant in the polytunnel and I hope to bring you some news of their progress over the coming months.
*Kitzie McKinney, Diversions of Transformation in Pantagruel's Medlar Myth. p.546
(The French Review. Vol LIX, No.4, March 1986)
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