Rhododendron Blossom

[poliphilo]

My new screensaver, wished on me by craftyailz , whose computer I’ve taken over, is, I’m told, a picture of a rhododendron blossom. I wouldn’t have known. It’s been blown up so large it’s like clouds of something thick and red expanding.

Blood in water. Lots of it.

Not pleasant. I preferred the hedgehog I had before with its beady little eye.

And now I’ve found the face in it.

A long, scroobious, puddingy face. Eyes like letterbox slits. An enormous nose. A mouth with a hanging lip. Male probably.

Not anybody I would want to be friends with but not unkind.

Inquisitive.

The hedgehog was thinking about slugs. Blood pudding man is thinking about me.

In the universe on his side of the glass my comparatively regular features are the extreme of grotesquerie.

There’s a smile on his wide, slobby mouth.

He finds me funny.

Comments

[zen-punk.livejournal.com]

I've been enjoying your journals for some time now(I feel like such a voyeur) and I decided this was as good a time as any to introduce myself. I have a question: what is the definition of "scroobius"? You made that up, didn't you?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Very pleased to meet you. Zen and punkiness- two of my favourite things.

Well no, scroobius is an Edward Lear word. He used it more than once and it means- whatever he meant it to mean. I find I've mis-spelled it slightly; the correct form is "scroobious".

Check here (http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/pw/pip.html) for an unfinished Lear poem called "The Scroobious Pip".

[zen-punk.livejournal.com]

Well, I still don't know what it means, but no matter. It reminded me slightly of Lewis Carol, or at least the word itself did. I wonder if you had a meaning in mind for "Scroobius" when you used it to describe Pudding Man.
(btw, I can not for the life of me discern his slit-like eyes or any other features in the capture you've posted.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Lear and Carroll were contemporaries- the two kings of Victorian nonsense writing.

The word "scroobious" just popped into my head and I accepted it. I didn't have an exact meaning in mind, but looking at it now I see it as a portmanteau word combining "scutiny" and "booby".

His two little eyes are almost dead centre (displaced a little to the right.) He has a long blobby nose and his mouth is near the bottom.