Sunday, April 09, 2006

Mint Tea Leaves


On a gorgeous Spring day, why would I post a photograph that's on this side of 'abject'? Something slightly unsavoury, that you draw back from? Perhaps I am in minor rebellion, posting an image of wilted flowers amidst the massive blossoming of flowers in the blogosphere, and now of used mint leaves, drenched, bleached-of-flavour and colour. They hardly look appetizing. I could have asked you to guess what it was. But didn't. Instead I'm going to share some of my process in creating an image.

Barely a meat eater, I do need some meat now and then and bought some lamb chops from a local butcher. He brought out an entire diaphram of ribs, which caught me in surprise, standing behind the counter watching, feeling the size of the lamb whose life had been cast for this. I silently thanked the lamb. After he wrapped six thin chops in brown paper and I purchased them I ambled to a small grocery store. My daughter's been on a vegetable and fruit diet, and I, too, have been enjoying more fresh produce. I buy strawberries, green grapes, green beans, granny smith apples, baby carrots, red pepper, eggplant, cauliflower, broccoli, and, just as I'm paying, grab a bag of fresh mint. At home the mint gets washed thoroughly and, except for a few sprigs, chopped finely, put in a small glass jar, vinegar and sugar and salt added. It will be the condiment for the lamb dinner I'll have the next day.

The remaining mint leaves are plunged into a half-litre thermos mug of boiling water, a lid screwed tightly on, and left for perhaps an hour. A little sugar, and the cup of mint tea is delicious.

Why did I photograph the remnants? My dog happily ate the bones from the lamb, a rare treat. I didn't photograph that. Instead I offer a sense of decay, a whiff, of something used, that you can't quite figure out in the photograph, but which I'm telling you about so you know.

Of the three photographs, I used two. One had a better rim, the other a more focussed view of the drenched, bleached-of-flavour mint. I use a marque tool to cut out the leaves from one photograph and transposed them to the other, laying them overtop of the less-in-focus wilted leaves. Then I used the rectangular marque tool to stretch the layer forwards, so that the leaves are longer vertically than in the original image, and don't quite fit into the rim of the cup. They are almost spilling out, but not naturally, it's a deliberate imposition, a photographic decision. Then I used the selection brush tool and drew a crude line around the rim of the mug, which was too bright since I'd used a flash, and bothered me. I set the foreground colour to a bright red and used the paint bucket tool to fill in the area marked by the brush tool. I set the foreground colour to black and used the paint bucket tool on the area around the cup, thus masking the parquet floor I had put the cup of drenched mint leaves on. Using the foregound colour tool I picked up the brown that was left in the background and set it as background colour and cropped the image slightly larger than the original so that the brown background colour became a border.

It was a beautifully scented and delicious cup of tea, and I enjoyed every sip. The mint imparted its delicate flavour to the boiling water and onto my appreciative taste buds with a lovely aroma. The simplicity of this. And what's in the cup is what was left afterwards, a memory, the leaves laying far away from the sunlight they grew in, the soil that nourished them, having given their minted essence to me, who remembers them in this photograph.

But my photograph is about the abject, what borders on decay, what's used and cast aside to recycle in the natural processes that overtake our refuse. They were shaken into the organic recycling bin, forgotten.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:22 PM

    Oh my, Miss Brenda~When I first viewed the image, my immediate thought was: "What do the tea leaves say?" And also, I thought, what a wonderful rustic container with the worn red rim. So, I thought of it in a travelling, magic-way context!! Then, when I read your entry, I found what the tea leaves represented in the moment of intent through your eyes. Then, I thought, wow, I looked at it so differently at the onset!

    I love this composition! How it illustrates the whole theme. I love how the image was created and opposed by the immediate picture of it through the eyes of my own view.

    This was quite an adventure~and quite superb.

    Blessings~

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  2. you're ability to see makes the abject beautiful. thank you for this insight.

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  3. I love this image. The tea leaves didn't look abject to me at all -- their greenness gave me a sense of pungency. And their stretched state gives them a dynamism, as though they are actively trying to climb out. I also love how the colors bleed through in both the rim and the floor. Great process.

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  4. Laurieglynn, oh, tea leaf reading - I wonder what we'd see... It's interesting that you saw it as a complete, rather than photographically constructed, image. And that 'tea leaf' reading I love!

    Snowsparkle, can what is abject be beautiful? Since it has to do with decay, illness, the body in disintegration, one wonders. But I come at this term through a circuitous postmodern route and it's perhaps unfair to overload the mint tea leaves with this concept. They are rather beautiful, like green tongues of spent fire...

    Gareth, I LOVE your poetry readings... I could listen to your voice hour on end. I am so glad you've begun to add these to your poems; the readings add a dimensions that enrichens. I'm honoured that you looked at my photopoem at flikr, some of which also have poetry readings attached to them... I look forward to enjoying much more of your work orally -:)

    e_journeys, that word "pungency" is so perfect that I'm wondering, between everyone's comments, if 'abject' was the right term at all. They're still so fresh, hardly disintegrating into buggy grotesqueries. It was a rather long post, but I am going to try to share more of the process, another sort of 'narrative'...

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A Pulsing Imagination - Ray Clews' Paintings

A video of some of my late brother Ray's paintings and poems I wrote for them. Direct link: https://youtu.be/V8iZyORoU9E ___