to have and to hold

Sometimes I know what I want to say - I have my target clearly in sight, I take aim and fire my words home. But sometimes I like to roam - around the houses and through endless dictionaries. To let whatever comes come.

I like to keep up with the tales of the albatross girl. I see a little of me in her, a little of her in me. Me back when I still had a flicker of faith in something more than this, more than me. A time before my heart turned to gilded jade.

And she prompts me to return to questions long overgrown with the dust of incomprehension. And so I ponder what is truly worth its weight in gilded jade? Only something that you can carry in your hand. That you can find in a smoke filled room with your eyes closed. Or swim across a channel with it tight beneath your tongue. Only if its still there on a rainy morning after an endless night. Something no-one can steal, break or turn to dust. A thing that can carry on after you have turned the page, turned off the lights and gone home. If not all this and more then what?

midnight rambler

[with photographic thanks to dandelion]

No need to mourn. No need to shed idle tears. She is not gone. She is just forgotten. By others and lately by herself. Even time has moved on without her.

by her bed
the glass of water
gathers dust

No longer keen to rise from the nest she builds each night. Within this haven she can roam where she likes.

sheets become sea -
pillows billow
as sky

And with dreams like these who would ask her to wake?

tidal persuasion

Sometimes its like I have so many thoughts - one at least for every stone on this, my favourite, beach. Each unique and coloured to suit and begging to be picked up and cherished, taken home and kept on the mantelpiece for a week or two. But they never stay still, they rattle and sway. The waves sweep in and reorganise, deliver a few new, wash one or two away.

And as I gaze at these words that seem to make their own way across my page, out of the corner of my eye the waves come and go. And I start to feel a little dizzy. As if I am the one swaying - ebbing and flowing, coming and going.

And from up here - standing firm on concrete and painted iron, jutting out over water and stone. From up here the gulls rise from beneath me - leaping from shredded surf to intermittent blue. Sea to sky in one breath. And it feels like I am conducting them - directing a never-ending symphony of feather and beaded eye. Until a wing winks across the sun to remind me. Who am I to pretend to command something so supremely free?

filed notes #3

[click to view detail]

cloud on my tongue

I dont know about you and your virtual arrangements. But I have a friendly frog who watches over this white-walled room that I built for myself. Call him the doorman, call him the guard. He sits and notes who comes in, who goes out and how long they linger for. He plays with numbers and leaves the words to me. He counts on his fingers and sometimes his toes.

He also observes which sign posts the people followed to find their way here. Sometimes our visitors come via wayward and winding routes. Some quite directly, like bullets from a friendly gun.

This week the frog and I shared a smile to see that one caller had come because they had dared to type a forbidden question into the ever inquisitive box. They had asked - 'why impossible to hold breath forever?’. A valid question and one we all ponder sometimes.

And the frog and I smile, and know that it is highly unlikely that they found their answer among these rooms. Instead they probably found themselves choking on our clouded questions. But just in case they call again, I’ll say that it isn’t impossible to hold your breath forever. You just have to believe.

the closest to heaven

I wake to a garden left two shades darker. Damp from a night-time visitor.

puddles
lay scattered -
I never see them arrive

Paper-made irises melt beneath the weight of water. Clumped and crushed they abandon faith in so-called spring. But their leaves never lose sight of their target. Throwing green lifelines straight up and out.

living lightning rods
channel raindrops
from sky to soil

Beckoning the clouds to come closer. Conducting the water that falls from on high. Directing each bead from tip to root. Feeding the need of their dry lipped greed. Sending hope to the hopeless.

[with photographic
thanks to dandelion]

to hope to be made happy

I am suspicious of love on the best of days, but sometimes its thrown about like so much confetti. White paper promises clouding the breeze, impairing the clarity of the view, and ultimately destined to clog the drains.

On days like these, days like today, the word is repeated so often it loses all meaning. It is reduced to a series of letters, or even less - to a series of shapes that barely recall what they used to represent.

The L becomes a corner, one fourth of nothing. A bookend without any books to prop. A right angle, but what about the wrong angles?

The O becomes a frame around a picture torn from view. A black hole. A mirror to show you whatever you want to see.

The V becomes the tooth of the vampire waiting to bite. The tip of the sword perpetually suspended above your head.

And the E the empty fork once the food loses its appeal. The spiky trident of our over-heated friend downstairs.

dreamtime #1

[click to view]

98 reasons for being

[a list inspired by the title of a book by Clare Dudman]

1. snowflakes 2. the ESCAPE key 3. pencil sharpeners 4. prehensile thumbs 5. feathers 6. the smell of new books 7. sneezing 8. unlikely cloud formations 9. blue glass 10. sunset skies 11. music for all seasons 12. sending postcards for no reason 13. saturday morning radio 14. long dessert spoons 15. chocolate turtles 16. perfect circles 17. colours bleached by streetlight 18. wicker baskets 19. black leather 20. the shape you leave on the pillow 21. cotton buds 22. over the counter drugs 23. the teabag 24. lucid dreaming 25. worry beads 26. the patience of mosaic 27. the odd one out 28. tambourines 29. butterfly museums 30. time spent alone with candlelight 31. origami 32. unexpected shadows 33. stem ginger 34. california dreaming 35. the murmur of beachstones 36. ceiling fans 37. medieval methods 38. the seven deadly sins 39. the theory of evolution 40. grass 41. symmetry 42. beanbag animals 43. glow in the dark 44. soapstone 45. cut and paste 46. celluloid god worship 47. the encore 48. window panes 49. smoke through a spotlight 50. remote control 51. unforgiving glances 52. certainty 53. purple ink 54. chain link fences 55. cinnamon 56. hole punch confetti 57. shaded eyes 58. thin curtains and heavy blankets 59. rust 60. the world within my walkman 61. bookmarks 62. moonlight shadows 63. fingerprints 64. post it notes 65. uncontrolled laughter at inappropriate times 66. the shape of your lips 67. bed bugs 68. faked polaroids 69. counting eyelashes 70. watching animals sleep 71. chewing tinfoil 72. cigarettes sleeping snug in their packet 73. the inside of your wrist 74. bootlaces 75. notes in the margin 76. the honest solitude of open water 77. very cherry jelly belly beans 78. anticipation 79. the greenwich meridian 80. earthworms 81. acoustic confession 82. cassilero del diablo 83. nothing more than this 84. a voice that can make you bleed 85. footsteps receeding 86. paper bags 87. virtual shopping carts 88. a strangers smile 89. planes that scar the sky 90. morning tears 91. absolute silence 92. sunday sun 93. freeze frame 94. reflection 95. alphabetical order 96. sycamore seeds 97. lemon tree leaves 98. a stuffed kingfisher

clean cut, unbecoming

ave maria

Thoughts arrive like butterflies. They land and linger on my leaves, begging me to write a net of words to capture their beauty. But I am over mesmerised and they escape every time.

One such butterfly of thought concerns the seas of the moon. Every few months they get a mention in something I read and I remember how much I want to write about them. But I can never begin. Something about their beauty combined with baroness, their uninhabited extreme, always leaves me speechless.

The dark patches that we can see on the moon are known as lunar maria (mare in the singular). They are dry plains created by volcanic eruption, reflecting less light, hence their dark appearance. They were named maria (from the Latin) by early astronomers, who mistook them for seas. The moon is also home to lakes, marshes, bays and an ocean.

But its their names more than their notion that draw me in. Particularly alluring to me is the Sea of Clouds set to turn the world upside down, and the Sea of the Edge, harking back to the days when the world was flat. I long to linger beside the Lake of Dreams and drown slowly in the Lake of Time. I could drag myself reluctantly from the Marsh of Sleep if only to behold the Bay of Rainbows.

And so I’ll settle to offer you a few scraps about them. And the thought that with names like those its no wonder I feel I am living in the wrong place.

redefinition #1

Gods bother me but angels appeal. All that illumination with added wings. They come in all shapes and sizes. Named or shamed they rise or fall. But what the books of the believers never tell you is how angels are made…


If you can name it you can break it. Mirrors, glass, bones, hearts and minds. Things you lose and things I find. You can collect up the pieces and try to glue them back together with patience or idle promises. You can wrap them in newspaper and lay them to rest in the bin. But there will always be a few fragments that get away. That lay embedded in the carpet, biding their time, only to float skywards one day.

And there they reconvene, brushing together their jagged edges and sharp corners. Meeting and greeting and reuniting in celebration of the shattered. Until all those forgotten have found a new place to be, to breathe and believe they can fly again.


So now you know. Now you see what was staring you in the face all along - a one letter shift between two words. And now, when something breaks, remember there is an angel in the making, so bless rather than curse the thing you’re breaking.

pieces of art

I’ve talked a bit about my quote taking habits before.

But there’s more to it - it goes beyond a handful of words lifted from one book to another. Most of the people I know are collectors and clippers - I see their lives peppered with special crumbs picked up on their travels. They spend their days gathering pieces of their passions. Cutting and pasting them into real or virtual albums. Hence my need for a whole blog just to store such finds. We people gather quotes, a few bars of a cherished song, a corner cut from a coloured canvas. Moments taken out of time.

And I wonder why… is it that these chosen bits are better than the whole? or perhaps because we simply cant carry a gallery or symphony in our pocket, head or heart. Maybe its like those people who carry tiny photos of their child or lover or pet in their wallet. We need a little something that is always by our side, a scrap of magic amid monotony.

[illustrations clipped from a few of the things that illuminate my days]

sensory overload

[click to view detail]

something in the air

Sometimes smell becomes my primary sense. When the animal in me still twitches its nose to show that domesticity hasnt completely tamed me.

A few days into the year and new lotions and potions are cracked open and applied to dry winter skin. And suddenly I no longer smell like me. I smell of a new me. A me who has wandered through exotic spaces and forbidden gardens, collecting spices on the soles of my feet and rare seeds in my hair.

And as my imagination races to the places my new skin might take me, memory drifts to the scent of moments left behind.

[click to view detail]

memento mori

As the final hours of the year slip through my fingers my thoughts turn to the way we mark our days.

I recall that I first started keeping a diary around easter 1993. At that time I would catalogue all my highs and lows, dips and disappointments in a series of A6 notebooks. I used a rainbow of whatever pens came to reach and my handwriting was as erratic as my mood. I wrote every day without fail. I never had nothing to say.

Sometime since I graduated to A5 notebooks, my handwriting has stabilised and I only write in black ball point. Currently my days are trapped between the pages of a book with cold corrugated metal covers. But with every progressive year I write less and less often. In 2003 I made 23 entries. In 2004 only four. In 2005 I wrote on 3 days. And in this past year I have not visited that paper palace even once.

Which leads me to wonder…

Where do they go when a poet loses her words? Where does it end up when a philosopher loses his train of thought? Are my diaries getting larger even as I have less to say? and where will this ultimately lead? Will I spend 2007 spray painting a slogan on a brick wall? and the year after scrawling silence across the sky?

breadcrumbs in a line

out-takes on a seasonal theme

-- the postman approaches, cloudy and vague through my condensation
-- browsing virtual shops, done up in the glory of festive fonts
-- whittling down the Christmas card list
-- eating ice-cream at bedtime - sweet to smooth away a bitter day
-- as winter grips my lemons surrender and fall from their tree
-- mail order frenzy, day by day, more of our Christmas arrives
-- wrapping with ease - grateful for small square gifts
-- once a year sentiments, scrawled and sent to distant friends
-- seven days between now and then - eight letters between you and me
-- I trap the hours in the holes formed by letters - each loop just large enough to hold a drop of blood
-- wood grain always lays in one direction - knowing itself and where its heading - I look at the spiralled confusion of my thumb print
-- the hazy sense of sleep approaches, anytime, anywhere unannounced - middle of the day, middle of the room
-- an excuse to try to smile and to eat iced gingerbread reindeer
-- frozen morning and you hold up a perfect replica of the inside of the bird bath bowl
-- we smile despite our false best wishes
-- baubles on the tree and cocktail cherries at the ready
-- wondering what you will wear on Christmas day, wherever you are
-- a years worth of news - good and bad - squeezed beneath the printed greetings

I know the mortar in the wall breaks

Back to the walls (of October 2005). I was wrong. I can see that now. I focused on the holes at the expense of the bricks.

Its not that we need more bricks. We are inundated with them. They fall from the sky. A never-ending tetris monsoon. Chucked down by the gaming gods. We can dodge them all we like, but the pieces will just pile up at our feet, and trip us with their technicoloured edges.

We need to stand still and take the time to slot them into place. But we must break the rules of the game. We must leave gaps. Gaps to breathe, gaps to look out and see our fellow builders coping with their own walls. And if we spy anyone too good at the game - blocked in solid behind their wall - we must fling a brick in their direction, hoping to break a window in their rainbowed frame. As within those walls there is only darkness and suffocation.

I remind myself, we must not fix our holes. We must not plug our gaps. We must play but we must play badly.

beginning of a great adventure

I prefer anticipation to instant gratification. I like to catch the scent of my dinner cooking for a while before I eat it. I like to get lost in lengthy introductions to favourite songs. I like to see daylight calling through my curtains before I open them.

I like to be teased. To have the moment of pleasure suspended rather than immediately granted. The real treat is in those extra few moments that allow the mind the chance to prepare itself for delight.

And so advent is always welcome. Its one of the few things we choose to hold onto from all the childhood pastimes that we willingly discard as our years advance. We give it our own trademark - less commercial, less tacky. We share pictures and sentiments and little gifts each day. Twenty four packages of homemade love.

And its not so much about a countdown to Christmas. Its not about opening a numbered window to a glittery picture each day. Its more about remaining aware of the inevitable passage of time. One day at a time for one month of the year. About finding ways to make each day a little more individual and unique.

divine retribution

For the record this is the sum total of my amber collection. Two bracelets restrung from beads that originally hung as one necklace - I prefer to shackle my wrists with colour these days. One silver set ring smuggled home from when I sailed to Copenhagen. I had another amber ring, given by a friend, but I seem to have lost it - the friend or the ring, I’m not sure which.

And a fake plastic impostor. As if it wasn’t obvious from its pale comparison to its surroundings - you only have to put it between your teeth and touch it with the tip of your tongue to know. It lacks the bittersweet treat of genuine amber. The flavour of its heritage.

Because we all know how amber is formed - the slow solidifying of sunflower honey, with a little of the garden always left behind. And we know that the pieces we receive are nothing more than the boiled sweets spat out by the gods. Ejected from their mighty mouths once they have sucked away all the pleasure. Discarded just before they reach the insects or seeds trapped within. Just like you or I might refrain a second before we reach the worm lurking beneath the tequila.

fade to grey

Almost as an undertone she drops them into conversation. But when we are done, when all is said and done and long forgotten, they linger and beg me to speak for them.

The second generation shadows. The ones that have broken free from their owners. Sometimes through struggle. Or when someone outgrew their shape and wanted to assume a new dimension that they couldn’t stretch to. Sometimes through neglect that left them hanging at home on a hook on the back of a bedroom door.

And then the ones cast aside by those rare individuals too slippery to hold a shadow close for long. People who move too fast, burn too bright, sitting thinking through the night. People with no need for a grey definition tagging behind them as they walk. So their shadows seek out other dark outcasts where they gather together and reminisce their long lost owners.

And its not just people - its plants and building and birds and chairs. So next time you see a shadow - take a moment to notice what its doing - to make sure its still tied to a form of roughly the same shape and size. Or if its one of those indistinct orphans, who may be eager to become your friend.

filed notes #2

[click to view detail]

In part in honour of the enigmatic gasometers.

filed notes #1

[click to view detail]

This encounter was illuminated by a recent teawiththebirds post.

chain reaction

Its only when I stand you side by side, under certain light, that it shows. You are the ghosts of one another. Shadows cut out and folded over. If one is the paper torn from the whole and the other is the hole, then which are you?

I remember those paper doll chains we made when we were small. Outlines of boys and girls holding hands. I never tore in the right places. With anticipation, I always went to unfold and they fell apart and tumbled to the floor. Forever separated from one another. A cut that could never be corrected.



I remember the ghosts of the second sentence. Urging me to tell you the truth two days too late for halloween. That ghosts are not somethings to avoid and fear. They are only cold because we run from them. The breeze we feel is the draught from our hurried escape. Step within and they are warm and welcoming, like tea or coffee steam but faintly herbal.

So don’t forget them. They wait patiently for you. Carpets of ghosts cover this land. Although we only see them when we wear a hole through the floor boards or the pavements that we have overlaid.

Ghosts walk forever hand in hand - unlike us and our broken paper dolls. Hand in hand through walls and floors, they can stand in adjacent rooms but still be connected. Disconnected in space and time, reality and fiction, here and hereafter, but still strung smokily together.

do it yourself

beyond reasonable doubt
(or how to make sense from confusion)

First, take the last book left on the lowest shelf. Tear out a blank page from the beginning or more likely the end. Find a pen - one of the ones hidden in the place you would least expect to find a pen.

Write down the riddles that fiddle their insidious tunes at the back of your mind. Write them in code. Write them back to front and upside down and inside out - any way so that no-one but you can know them.

Write them boldly in black ink that always smells faintly like the stains left behind by spilled white wine. Then fold the page in half and half and half again - then go one fold beyond what the paper is willing to allow you.

Tear out lots of little pieces - if desired using your fingers and teeth. Let the newborn confetti gather around your bare feet. Unfold the page, now grown a hundred fold by the elasticity of your words. Wrap the paper lace around you, thin against your naked skin, and see only little pieces of you showing through in erratic patterns.

Walk outside and stand still. Wait for the weather to notice you - don’t worry, it might take a while but it always will. When it comes, don’t forget to greet the rain by name. Then stand and be bathed in her gentle blame.

As the paper dissolves, the riddles resolve and the words and the thoughts wash free from your skin. They pool at your feet which slowly sink into the welcoming ground. Until all you are is a ripple on the surface of an uneven puddle on a cloudless day.

easy way out

[All week I have been trying to write a piece about something that struck me as vitally important last Sunday morning. About a someone who had been overlooked. And only now I realise I am writing a story. Dreaming a fiction of your reality. And that is as bad as forgetting you altogether. I realise this is a familiar pattern I fall into. Filling the holes of unknown with imaginary detail. This is wrong. I have no right to claim any story but my own. So no cohesive piece today. Just the random threads pulled apart from my attempt to weave a blanket to keep you warm.]


I see you. Sitting. Legs folded. Thin carpet beneath you. Light enters the room, and falls as empty angles across furniture. You don’t notice the light. Similarly it ignores you, but does not choose to leave. It lingers. Like time. Like breath held too long. A thought grown too strong. The thought that your feet could be anyones but your hands are all mine. And they fiddle with each other. Ever restless. Ever impatient.

They called you the one with the quiet voice. They say you lived on the periphery, whispering thin secrets that we could only catch by the edges. They say you lived a quiet death. A silent puncture, and a gentle deflation. They say you died in a place named after echoes. They say that’s all we hear - the cyclical repetitions of the things you shared with us.

I never sent a postcard. From nowhere. For no reason. I never answered the phone, before you’d even dialled. I never held my breath to hear you speak. I never kept your letters between the pages of my books. I never made you sigh. I never saw the way your hair fell in the morning. I never reached for your hand in the middle of the night. I never laid flowers on your grave. I never knew you enough to forget you.

unlikely treasures

Sick of complaining that I have words to spare with nothing to pin them to, I remind myself to look everywhere for inspiration, leaving no nook or cranny unexplored. And so I lead you to an overlooked. A place seldom glanced. Just spun a few revolutions each day on the quest for a clean sheet.

And I find a butterfly inside our toilet roll tube. Or at least the shadow of a butterfly. A black stamped symbol with four fold wings. There is a number printed next to it. Inky digits laid there for a reason.



Things like this preoccupy me and make me wonder what it means. Perhaps that toilet paper is made from butterflies. Or that butterflies are made from toilet paper. And that exactly one thousand one hundred and seventy six go into the making of each.

Bear this in mind the next time you sit in contemplation in your bathroom or your garden. Take care that your toilet rolls don’t take to the sky, or that your butterflies don’t dissolve in the rain.

a gift from the earth

Like the jeweller loves his precious stones. The thrill of a treasure found hidden within compressed centuries. Chipped it out from its surroundings and dragged to the surface. Measured. Cut. Polished. Held up to the light - all perfect angles and magic surface. All colour and light contained within - secrets of the underworld.

I’m dazzled by words. I prise them out from their paper chains. Barricades of ruled lines. I let them dance on the tip of my tongue and wonder at the partners they choose. I spin them through my fingers - a literate card trick.

Today the sparkle comes from the partnership between -

One letter to divide and differentiate. One letter to mark between the sharp novelty of a pulled cracker - and the breathy warning of the snake in the grass.

under a full moon

[an anniversary message from me and my blog]

Its a year to the day since I sank to this unclaimed stretch of the abyssal plain. Since I planted my flag and claimed this barren patch as my own. When I accepted my mission I suspected I was the only one foolish enough to plunge to such depths. But now I grow accustomed to my home alone on the sea bed.

There is no sound under my ocean. And only limited colours. But unlimited wonder if you are willing to hold your breath and squint. If I am willing to learn to listen to the sound of my own voice. My. Own. Voice.

Since landing I have let 71 bubbles float to the surface. Some large, some small. Some brittle, some bold. Some have never made it - forever adrift on erratic currents. But I am sure I have heard one or two burst as they break for freedom.

Schools of precious creatures pass this way - growing a little more numerous and bolder by the day. Among them the strangest fish. Species I am taking my time to identify. Labelling each - predator or prey.

I’ve weathered underwater storms and the changing temperatures of the deep. I’ve sent cables of communication to other oceanic explorers. I hear their steady bleeps and see their occasional flashes of light. And I know they see mine.

Tonight the moon is full, but its light is unlikely to reach me here. Where I sit still dreaming the infinite dream of impossibility.

the ghost in you

white cat
squeezes through black railings
quiet as a ghost

A welcome return to blanket road. Where this time the shouting has stopped. All is calm, all is still. Nothing speaks, nothing breathes - but something moves. A whiteness - that eases its way between parallel lines of isolation.

A cat departs the cemetery. It rolls in the road. It licks itself. It seems to like itself. Content within its skin. Happy with its cat-self. It licks the tarmac. Comparing extremes on the tip of its tongue. Hard and soft take turns in the taste game.

It glances up the road. Chances a few more minutes in the middle. It seems more reckless than most. As if it has gathered extra lives from its padding across the gravestones. From where it loitered among resting spaces, savouring the scent of forgotten names and remembered weeds. Collecting horizontal and vertical thoughts into its furred bag. Nine multiplied by nine always leaves some spare.

brittle thinking

Some might say television is the opiate of the masses. I believe that used selectively and critically it can be educational, valid, and inspiring.

On Monday I watched people frozen to save their lives. Particularly striking was the woman trapped under ice - feet up through a hole, held tight as her last link to the surface world. Head half submerged in freezing water. Slowly slowing down. Thoughts, blood, heartbeats. Losing heat, losing life. Till nothing - silence, stillness, stasis. Hours while she is dug out, held, handled, carried and flown to the most northerly hospital in the world. Then peered at, poked and monitored. Slowly warmed - welcomed back into softness and movement. Breath revisits - movement remembered - life returned.


I watch and then I turn from the screen and I think.

Only the cold saved her. We mammals need warmth to survive, but she needed cold. A step outside of the rules of nature. An inversion of how things should be. I think of the relationship between heat and cold. How one can feel like the other. How ice can burn. They are opposites. Like life to death. In one always the other.

I think of all those mottos - what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, kill or be killed, no pain no gain. I think about what is being killed. Kill the senses, kill the desires, kill the instinct to cling to the thinning thread.

And then I think about myself, and how sometimes I know how she feels. I call them my everyday winters. I have to invert myself to a reversed 45 degrees. I have to freeze out consciousness, freeze myself in. Hibernation of the mind. I have to hold my breath and close my eyes. I have to play dead. You might not notice - the signs are subtle but there. A crispness to my tone and occasional visible breath. Suspended - just till the tides of time carry me beyond today. To a place more welcoming, a place with smoother edges. A place where I begin to thaw.

writing to reach you

This is the plant that stands to my left. My witness when I come here to write. She always cries exactly one day after I water her. And I always wonder why.

Perhaps she cries in gratitude - that I have now remembered her, when for weeks I have passed by without a glance in her direction. Perhaps she cries for being nameless - all because I carelessly lost her label soon after we met. Her closest neighbour is a lemon tree - so perhaps she cries tears of inferiority because she lacks a vivid scent.

Maybe she cries because she is looking in when she should be looking out. Longing to break the glass that keeps the sky at bay. Maybe she misses for the smell of the damp soil in the evening or the midnight whispers of a passing snail.

I think she cries at the memory of the sounds of standing in the rain, the sensation of the sky as it falls and collects on her leaves.

memories form a disorderly queue

You’ve left the towels on the line again. One grey one. One blue one. Two hand towels. You’ve only got two hand towels. You’ve only got two hands. Our line - a green metal contraption strung with yellow plastic string. Also sporting a plastic peg basket full of plastic pegs.

I remember when we had wooden ones that darkened when wet. That squeaked when I snapped them open and closed. Making crocodile smiles. Despite warnings I couldn’t resist clipping them to my lips or the tip of my tongue. Speechless. The surprise greeting of pain. Always sharper and more lingering than you think.

I remember fetes with stalls where people broke those wooden pegs apart and reassembled them into new things. I had a rocking chair made of pegs - a miniature one, of course. Something used to sit in it. A doll, or more likely a bear, or more likely a duck. I forget the inhabitant but I remember the chair. So often the way.

You’ve left the towels on the line again. Drenched each night by summer storms, they begin each day a little heavier than the last. Don’t we all. Through the day they doze a dream of evaporation, casting off a haze of concern. Their only lingering worry - that they may be left there till winter to freeze stiff and snap. Don’t we all. Eventually.

reflect what you are

Last Monday I found a place that never took the time to find me. I saw seas of green and leaves that choose to linger. And I saw these shining fragments of infinity, raised a quarter way to the sky.


Ever intrigued, I pulled on my disguise to mingle with the locals as they perched on their branches and their backs of benches. And they explained this monument - this tribute to their abandonment of vanity.

For birds have no need for reflection - enough that they appear in each others eyes. They have no desire to admire their images. Why would you if you could fly?

soft

silent

steep

sharp

impossible paleontology

Like city streets I’m a one way system. I can read or I can write. Things come in and things go out. Never both at the same time.

If I splay myself wide and walk with one foot on each side of the street - one in the sun and one in the shade I can waddle along for a while. But its tough and progress is slow, and neither side gets full attention.

At the moment the reading side of the street has caught my eye. I am looking in all the windows and buying the wares (all in the name of my Booker 2006 experience).

But the shady side suffers. Largely unwalked, my pages curl from sunlight rather than heavily laid words. Poised, my pen gathers frustrated ink at its tip.

Thoughts arrive and depart un-netted. I look up from a book at an unfamiliar howl or hoot. A funny looking face beckons me closer. I write a hasty note-to-self. A reminder to come back later and catch this crazy beast - to pin and mount him and lay him on display in this maudlin museum of freakery.

But when I return, a few days later - follow the scanty signpost I left myself - I find nothing but dust and bones of the rarest kind.

all the streets are crammed with things eager to be held

This is yesterday. I am being chased away from a place I don’t belong. Raced home from a quick trip to collect some books from the library. Dodging occasional raindrops that threaten to re-punctuate my sentences. Evading normalitys glance as it threatens to dull my senses.

This town is not mine. It is too full of people cleaning their cars. Husbands with sponges and a shine on their mind. Wives feet sticking out of back doors as they Hoover up conjugal crumbs. Too many people carry shopping bags bulging with Saturday routine. Too many people are holding hands, clinging together for safety, like children crossing a road.



As I speed away from today I see that I am feather racing. A small whiteness is dragged along in my slipstream - pulled on by the weight, speed and intensity of me. Or is it the other way round? Does it draw me on, forever tied by forgotten ancestry. Shared avian pasts - forgotten by everyone but the leaves.

one shade more, one ray less

She walks in blue. Barefoot and true. Her clothes nothing more than fibres laid between herself and her sky. Toes that could turn the tide if they chose to.

All the seagulls move aside - only to watch her. To watch her continue on her way. White and grey. Skin tanned to breakwater brown. Soundlessly, endlessly on.

Around the edges of this island. Never questioning why. Her commitment keeps us safe. It breaks a space for us to sit high and dry - observing her progress.

She walks because she knows. Knowing enough to know. That sometimes the tide is high, sometimes low.

[I see her but she is not mine to watch. My walker walks at night - when my eyes are closed and I cant see her. My walker walks on rainy days - when I am buried indoors under papers and dirty looks.]

I aint got time for the game

From either side of the screen people smile or scream and demand we consider the meaning of life. But don’t they realise I have spent my time doing little else? And I am getting closer to an answer.

And the answer is looking a lot like the puzzle known as the Towers of Hanoi.

When I was little, my Dad and I subscribed to a computer magazine. Each issue had lines and lines of BASIC code. We would type it in, letter by number, line by line and then hit ‘RUN’. We programmed this puzzle. Ever since it has fascinated me. You can play it here.

Did you enjoy it? did it drive you crazy?

It’s a lot like life. Its all about making little moves, one step at a time to get closer to where you want to be. Even though that place is only a few steps from where you started. You have to learn early on never to put a heavy load onto a foundation that cant hold it up. You have to keep a tight hold on your patience. You always have to think one or more steps ahead. You have to be prepared to accept that sometimes you will feel like you are moving backwards.

And just like life - its best played calmly, with all the time in the world, a cup of tea, and a quiet room all to yourself.

the road to nowhere

I am on a path of ideas. I have to keep walking. There is further to travel to reach my destination. Continue with me if you will.

Do we use methods of capture to keep a safe distance between ourselves and our reality, ourselves and our experiences, ourselves and our former selves? Do we seek to put a frame around moments so they are contained and cannot leak beyond the boundaries we allow them. Does this extend beyond the stasis of photography. Is it at play in films trapped on celluloid and wound onto concealed reels? words inked into bottom-drawer diaries? conversations ended with knowing silence?

‘maybe I shot the video tape so I wouldn’t have to remember it myself’ David Freidman

I wonder if all things look better from a distance? Up close we are microscopes to every imperfection. With time and distance the serrated edges of emotion grow blunt - so we can press against them with little fear to our paper thin skin. In their time smoothed surfaces we see a little of ourselves, but mostly just them.

‘you pass through boredom into fascination’ Adam Phillips

Writing becomes universal and somehow more profound when read at a time when the acute meaning has dimmed. Like large works of impressionist art. Up close we see blocks and dots of colour and paint - take a few steps back and a masterpiece greets us.

As I retreat from this room I look at the far wall, and ask… is it leaving me - am I leaving it - or is the parting mutual?

paper poses

This island melts to soft focus - my eyes threaten to drip from their sockets to the page. Thought shifts to photographs. To faces frozen in time - expressions locked for lifetimes to come. People inkpinned to paper.

Some of my favourite photos of my favoured friends are those they probably like the least. Images where their mind has left the building that is the body. Vacant possession. They are sham castles - all flashy front but nothing to inhabit.

Their eyes are empty of meaning, thought, life. They have been bled dry by madness, misery, or distracting thought. They hold two dimensional poses - as if they painted themselves that way that day because they knew the only thing they would be fit for is a quick dip in a chemical bath and an early burial between the pages of an unread book.

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