tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-175717252024-03-07T18:54:28.368+00:00a longing for the impossiblea sometimes scrapbook of words, thoughts, ideas and picturesjemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.comBlogger249125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-91667849235137158312014-04-24T13:42:00.004+00:002014-04-24T13:42:59.275+00:00waste not, want not<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsQ-DfeGSIoOl7Gpy9o8xHiQyknOPzBEMQ0ssReDbx-rVaalE3Ge21zAeRb8fKWf3fpBfUN77s2iXb2HnFM-elKwwHX4KeuS6PjYGbaXYq3fsMDapYRkBwqiMRWR4w1r204YiVPw/s1600/holes.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsQ-DfeGSIoOl7Gpy9o8xHiQyknOPzBEMQ0ssReDbx-rVaalE3Ge21zAeRb8fKWf3fpBfUN77s2iXb2HnFM-elKwwHX4KeuS6PjYGbaXYq3fsMDapYRkBwqiMRWR4w1r204YiVPw/s1600/holes.JPG" height="267" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I
pass back and forth through a small sheaf of concertinaed printer
paper. First I ease off the edges - the long ribbons full of holes
that were once deemed necessary to guide the paper through the
printer. Now my roller welcomes one sheet at a time - although on
most days the lines are a little skewed, but that suits my writing.
I hold the bunched edges in my hand and note a fleeting thought - if
we had a gerbil or a child they might have fun with these cast-offs.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then
I separate each sheet from the one before it and the one that
follows. A swaying rhythm builds in me as I go. And I think of how
we're still working our way through the stationary supplies that my
father liberated from his eighties office job. A brown-jacket with a
cardboard box under one arm - topped with the name of the woman in
charge of such supplies. At least he never came home with her under
his arm.</span></div>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-43512424475824407042014-02-13T11:05:00.004+00:002014-02-13T11:05:52.194+00:00the fingerprints of raindrops<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>the
place where</i></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">we
touch - feeling
</span></i></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>every
gust of wind</i></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A
month before their wedding day, they break up. And I can't help
blaming the weather.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We
are changing. Evolving. Into squinting beasts. Half-hunched and
stiff of limb. One day they will look back and say, that was where
it all started.
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The
boom of another fallen wheelie bin. Ripped up and torn, the sound of
car horns and a siren.
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We
make hourly trade-offs - moving away from the warmer, quieter, safer
core of our home. To the edges. The windows. Our rain lashed
fringes. Only two sheets of glass between us and this weather. The
pain. We move there because we seek even remnants of light. To read
by. To write by. To be by.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>this
wind</i></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">now
snatching the last</span></i></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>scraps
of daylight</i></span></div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-85477600548855191852014-01-17T13:05:00.000+00:002014-02-05T16:52:19.569+00:00paved with gold<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’ve just started a new notebook – for the foreseeable
future I will be bound within Leuchtturm’s Anthracite covers. I hope the properties of the mineral seep
into my writing. I’d like it to become
more compact but with a high lustre.
Starting a new notebook always makes me look back to the first thing I
wrote in the last one. My preoccupations
last June were roughly as follows.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are some holiday snaps I’m better off not seeing. <st1:place w:st="on">Hong Kong</st1:place>
pet shops or restaurants included. The
fact that I can’t tell adds to the problem.
Fish in all colours, all sizes hanging in rows in plastic bags. My eye can’t help but be delighted by the
unintentional magic of it all. But my
head bursts and my heart’s flow drips to the floor. These fish are like our ideas, our dreams –
each held somewhere too small. Too
little water, too little air – no wonder they won’t survive.</span></div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-15771868122158613762013-06-21T12:16:00.000+00:002013-06-21T12:17:20.360+00:00sweet dreams on stony ground<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She gives me many things including the name of our creeping
wood sorrel (<i><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">oxalis corniculata</span></i><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">). We have the regular
sort too – but it’s this one I really love.
And now I know its name I love it even more. Knowing the name and a bit about the nature
of something allows you to know it more - you’d hardly call someone a friend if
you didn’t call them by their name? Now
I know them I feel I can visit our creeping wood sorrel and see how it is
doing, how it feels each day. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaZGdDyzgmqsxkWpNXwkPBZYFWS_sLzFgoWHysWXj4ec5r2MxmY6tbTuSvegLGrTLRxy-C_C5Ef01rcHLNp9dR2QOkVnodN1Em7rcfzvQpqGpQF4zGkZvo63FoFICA-2f6bkwedg/s1600/creeping+ws.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaZGdDyzgmqsxkWpNXwkPBZYFWS_sLzFgoWHysWXj4ec5r2MxmY6tbTuSvegLGrTLRxy-C_C5Ef01rcHLNp9dR2QOkVnodN1Em7rcfzvQpqGpQF4zGkZvo63FoFICA-2f6bkwedg/s400/creeping+ws.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Congregating
along the edges and breaks in our paths it acts like a reddish green
cushion. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It softens our environment – it
hides our cracks by filling them.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It
wants to help us forget where we are broken, to soothe our jagged places.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And to punctuate its curves with tiny perfect
flowers.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Like air holes punched in a
cardboard box – a way to let us breathe in our confinement.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To offer us bright ideas on dull days. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I notice that these flowers close up when
there’s no sun.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tight pinpricks of
yellow across the path – just enough colour for us to believe their promise to
return.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A little reading tells me it’s an <st1:place w:st="on">Old
World</st1:place> plant now mostly considered a weed. It can be eaten and bears the flavour of
lemons but can be problematic in large doses.
Low-growing, it appears delicate but is known to be explosive when trying
to further its cause. All this
reinforces why we get along - and that it’s sometimes known as Sleeping Beauty
is even better. </span></div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-14227295004431535752013-05-16T09:26:00.000+00:002013-06-21T12:18:18.417+00:00unlikely origami<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’ve spent a few recent Mondays drinking cheap tea and making notes in a slightly sticky seafront café. There are windows to my left and right. I can look out to sea - and see a tide that is heaving and groaning, and like me seems to still be chewing over a recent conversation. I can look to my right and notice one yellowed globe among all the lights. I can look further inland and see a blue scaffolding net chopping in the wind. I can get lost for a while in the archipelago of rust on the serviette holder and realise a phrase like that will always have far too many syllables to work in haiku! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And then I can be surprised when a character from a haiku I wrote ten years ago walks through the door. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">you fold my face in half</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and slide me under the leg</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">of your wobbly chair</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There she is – the folded woman from my photo. A scar stretched taut across her cheek – smoothed with flesh-coloured filler – but clear from ear to chin. One third of her portrait tucked back on itself. Once used to give a millimetre boost to someone who needed it.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-50663547980479589102013-05-01T11:49:00.003+00:002013-05-01T11:49:41.745+00:00circles in the sand<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sharing creative space has more benefits than
drawbacks. It allows for unexpected
eddies of idea to flow back and forth across a table, across a room. While I hold pen she holds hook or
needle. Sentences tangle across my page
while woollen circles come to life in her hands.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I see the things she has made in ways other than she
intended. My writer’s eye turns them
into creatures from beneath the sea - sponges and anemones. Unlikely lichens crusting strange trees. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I see pieces that draw in on themselves and others that
sprawl, refusing to have a uniform outline.
I see ones that are dense and others that are wiling to let light
through. I realise that all of these
accusations can be levelled at my writing.
The company of her crocheted
clouds keeps me warm.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Before too long my first word doily is taking shape on my
page. I turn the paper as I work. My letters are stitches, my phrases
chains. I start off neater than I
finish. My written hand loses meaning –
the words become mere wiggled lines of ink.
And in this form even my errors start to appeal. A wonky letter or a word repeated where it
shouldn’t be – my equivalent of a dropped stitch, a loose section. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From a distance, like an overheard conversation, only the pattern
vaguely recognisable – but as you draw closer, words and perhaps meaning start
to take shape.</span></div>
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jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-33992087393401528512013-04-04T09:58:00.004+00:002013-04-04T09:58:45.063+00:00postcards from the edge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Approaching the end of a long winter, this seaside town
creaks into life. The promenade train is
running again. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Black-head gulls walk parallel to the ripples, all heading
eastwards. Large ladies in bulky coats
squeeze onto a sheltered bench.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A gull watches pigeon shadows skim across the stones. Amid scooters and screams a boy tells his
mother he has found half a mermaid’s purse. </span></div>
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<br />jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-38351579135350237452013-03-20T13:22:00.000+00:002013-03-20T15:48:06.409+00:00still life spring<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLsSB2IBMcxZySCjX_10s7OpZpxeCm9eo-AeDNDMXQYO7BDJzKej91KI-y83_b4J0Ot15Wv6iBKADcYHDWbmoVTXpq1X_MklCzznuntIgewolB0Q81EWKxlTO9Qwq3XfQvUYaJdQ/s1600/daffs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLsSB2IBMcxZySCjX_10s7OpZpxeCm9eo-AeDNDMXQYO7BDJzKej91KI-y83_b4J0Ot15Wv6iBKADcYHDWbmoVTXpq1X_MklCzznuntIgewolB0Q81EWKxlTO9Qwq3XfQvUYaJdQ/s640/daffs.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She brings them with her, and while she is here their little
bundle lays on top of the fridge and shivers from time to time, as do I. Later we put them in the perfect vase. Each stem falls into a fold – splayed like a
gentle explosion. They lean like they
would in the wind if the wind could blow in all directions at the same
time. And today, at times, it felt like
it did.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The daffodils she gave us are nearly spent. Over the last few evenings they have started
to give off a floral scent. A faint
premonition of imminent decay. As if to
remind us not to forget them before they are gone. In all that’s going on it’s easy to overlook
mere daffodils.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A week after she gave them to us her daffodils died. On the same day she met her first child. We replaced them with a second bunch – how
quickly we grow to depend on their presence.
And these ones saw us through the snow, standing firm while our one wild
one fell at the first fall. They looked
like the ones we made when we were young, when painting sections of an egg box
was considered fun. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We welcome our third one-pound bunch – twenty stems bound
together like yellow-tipped green pencils.
They will be ready in a day or two to draw a small picture of
spring. We stand them in the wide-necked
vase and let go. Like a game of
pick-up-sticks stalled at the start.
Like this spring, repeatedly halted by winter’s freeze-frame.</span></div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-25908728663734615992013-03-05T12:52:00.000+00:002013-03-05T12:52:24.952+00:00life lines<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEity1FBb8kKKoz7zHH0kfYTJ-pqD_CTcSbOK-ECFAdrxW1PIYwafmRA9_UTs5x408gMm_Vs1nX4WR7An99DO9Ir1wYAAF_40cNprYVEJXpGoQTwFDuZn2v7liAR-7lv7bJOCGLPIQ/s1600/lifelines.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="560" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEity1FBb8kKKoz7zHH0kfYTJ-pqD_CTcSbOK-ECFAdrxW1PIYwafmRA9_UTs5x408gMm_Vs1nX4WR7An99DO9Ir1wYAAF_40cNprYVEJXpGoQTwFDuZn2v7liAR-7lv7bJOCGLPIQ/s640/lifelines.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-23071144860272389362013-02-20T11:57:00.000+00:002013-02-20T11:57:18.320+00:00rope tricks<br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She says <i>‘There are so
many ways to hold the rope’</i> and I cannot help but agree. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Despite the fact that we’ve never been to sea even though we
live at the edge of the land and count the English Channel as one of our
closest friends. Although I do remember
a time I folded a paper boat and set it to sail in our birdbath. But that’s hardly taking to the high
seas. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We’ve never flown together either – but we have sat side by
side and watched a thin twig turn into a tree – we’ve done crosswords in the
shade and gazed forever upwards into her leaves and let them lift us closer to
the sky.</span></div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-42357606092618484662013-02-06T10:48:00.002+00:002013-02-06T10:48:26.062+00:00requiem for a stationer’s dream<br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’m an addict.
Post-it notes are my drug of choice (this is not the first time I’ve had
to admit to a paper-based dependence).
They feather the inside covers of every notebook. But like most intoxicants I wonder if they
are finally getting the better of me. I
wonder if the thrill of usage is being undercut by the comedown. The realisation grows that while I clearly
had a great time while using I have no recollection of the high. Instead I am left with tattered squares covered
with scribbles that strive to remind me of the ride.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I make these notes to let my pen catch up with my
thoughts. But I wonder if my notation is
letting me down. I’m starting to
struggle to decode myself. I’m finding
initials and scratches of phrase that mean nothing. I knew I had a problem when the other
day I found a stern command in bold
capitals to ‘WRITE ABOUT D & G’ with no idea who or what this refers to,
but I’m fairly sure it’s not Dolce & Gabbana. Maybe this is how it looks when a writer
loses their mind.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHC9My2g9pumsBJQmOIvJ3GXHOmPHRiZ-A2kbdQetzc3lSj4qqf0GcEWXuFXWUhHVI3vKpFmZn2Kgu1MrrO0OOBgGlxB8omTArAjSkIi8BYpRMiB7dfCdD4RpHqFENX8BV35Fklg/s1600/requiem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHC9My2g9pumsBJQmOIvJ3GXHOmPHRiZ-A2kbdQetzc3lSj4qqf0GcEWXuFXWUhHVI3vKpFmZn2Kgu1MrrO0OOBgGlxB8omTArAjSkIi8BYpRMiB7dfCdD4RpHqFENX8BV35Fklg/s400/requiem.jpg" width="271" /></span></a></div>
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</div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And while they are of little use if they don’t remind me of
what I wanted to remember at least they form a strange poetry of their own. And if my jottings were intended to be a sprinkled
line of breadcrumbs to lead me home that has clearly failed - but at least I’ve
fed the birds.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-36234263757452522012013-01-24T11:00:00.001+00:002013-01-24T11:00:35.194+00:00snow diary two<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(marking the melting more than the fall)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>day one</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First snow fall. A
messy affair – the snow has fallen with prejudice, favouring leaves and the
narrow edges of fences and walls – avoiding large areas of tarmac and
concrete. The effect is uneven and not
the completion we know this beast is capable of. On her back windscreen the layer of snow is
melting and slipping – opening like a lazy eye.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>day five</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Second fall. What
wasn’t there when we woke now is. This
Friday disappears, one settled centimetre after the other. Upturned hanging baskets become snow crusted
cages protecting bulb sprouts beneath.
The deep huff of snow collapsing beneath her boot steps. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>day six</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is a beach of bare path around our door. There are footprints coming close to the
house – some look long-pawed, perhaps belonging to the fox I saw in the road
last night. I have little left to say
about this snow but more maybe on it’s way – the forecasts are vague – perhaps
if it comes it will bring my words with it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>day seven</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She retreads her track to the birdbath and back. The snow falls in fine flakes that make me
feel like I’m looking at old photographs of our garden – grown speckled and
pale from the drift of memory.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>day eight</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A perfect dome of snow still covers our chosen marker
stone. There are other blobs and bumps
of snow on the paths and I wish I could learn a frozen form of Braille – to
read them and learn the story of what lies beneath.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>day nine</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Surrounded by the drippings of thaw as my word count
grows. The snow becomes glassy and
darker at it’s base – it starts to let go, surrender this temporary state – it
prepares to slide away.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>day eleven</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Third fall. An
unexpected visitor over night. Cars pass
with ruffling toppings – as if someone has pushed back a tablecloth once the
meal is over. The tops of fences like
the edges of ripped paper – abandon another bad idea. </span></div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-35232082604965254622013-01-10T12:40:00.000+00:002013-01-10T12:41:41.537+00:00friend of a friend<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Every new year I struggle to throw away last year’s
calendar, to abandon the colours that have kept me company each month. So this year I truly recycled – snipping free
little replicas of 18<sup>th</sup> century birds. These are the ones that got away – the ones
that want to tell their stories before they go.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I search online to find any details of that calendar I
find nothing but dead links – to all intents and purposes those birds of 2012
are extinct. But I remember them, larger
and sharper than these clippings suggest – hung on a hook above the study
radiator. Pages lifting and falling and
curling slightly in the updraught - even in two dimensions they longed to fly.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggTZsBTsWcMp1nGcR9wWu7NBtnwgnwnJaUI6g-jXGKYBq7OERhbDxI28W3_YzA-2NCHkc6nA6TRkYfY4894vAm2XZ62d3TSwAckCt_IhF2YZfnhGsXUVK0VoNIDpO4qDWfQxYbNg/s1600/bird+%231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggTZsBTsWcMp1nGcR9wWu7NBtnwgnwnJaUI6g-jXGKYBq7OERhbDxI28W3_YzA-2NCHkc6nA6TRkYfY4894vAm2XZ62d3TSwAckCt_IhF2YZfnhGsXUVK0VoNIDpO4qDWfQxYbNg/s400/bird+%231.jpg" width="322" /></a></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am the bird above the blue bird. You don’t need to know my name or anything
much about me. My feathers come in a
handful of colours so I fit well in most social situations and adapt easily to
everyday avian requirements. Not so my
friend below.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He is a bird of a discontented hue. Every time he perches nearby his pips and
trills are filled with how he has spent much of his morning flying cloud-high
only to close his wings and free-fall, eyes closed – pretending to be a
raindrop. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He tells me too how tomorrow he plans to fly two miles out
over the sea, then will his feathers to turn to scales, his wings to fins so he
can dive right in.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some birds weren’t meant to be hatched blue.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-32174584047317155522012-10-23T12:54:00.000+00:002013-01-24T11:05:30.041+00:00seaside gothic<span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am somewhere between excitement and fear. I can’t see where I’m going – anything might
be waiting there. Or worse, nothing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I can’t see where I’m going, and where I’m going can’t see
me. The end of the pier neither here nor
there – lost in thick mist.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>there for the taking</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>so much poetry</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>in the mist</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I should have brought my camera – not that there is much to
see. Crows in the mist and the view to
the west slightly clearer than the east.
It kills sound as well as sight, this mist. But what it leaves of both becomes more vital. I cling to any sensations still available. I don’t just hear the waves – I feel them
through the structure I stand on. The
footsteps of other people speak to me through the vibrations of the
boards. I am conducting a séance –
awaiting knocks and tremors – trying to reach the living rather than the dead.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>something certain</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>the sound of the waves</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>in this mist</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And every time I walk on two crows appear just ahead of me –
as if they are here to guide me back inland.
As if they have been spat out of the mist after it has finished
devouring the usual white birds.</span></div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-2541309911406666102012-05-16T11:38:00.000+00:002012-05-16T11:38:03.217+00:00writing between the lines<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I spend a lot of time thinking about writing even when I’m
not. I picture my hand holding a pen and
crawling letter by letter across a blank page.
Forming sentences is my version of counting the rosary – part comfort,
part confession. Writing self-help books
say one must believe oneself to be a writer.
And I do – albeit one who doesn’t write much, or as much as I should, or
want to.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’m comforted when I encounter other writers who write about
not writing, or the end of their writing, or the things they haven’t
written. There was a great piece by John
Barth in a recent Granta magazine – <a href="http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Granta-Audio-John-Barth" target="_blank">replicated here as a podcast</a>. And George Steiner’s My Unwritten Books was
worth every penny of it’s Poundland price.
It’s comforting to know I’m not the only one. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are things that I’d like to write about but likely
never will - but still such pleasure to imagine what might happen if I did.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stories about approaching <st1:place w:st="on">St Petersburg</st1:place> by boat. Of
something lost in the middle of the <st1:place w:st="on">North Sea</st1:place>. About those strange places where oceans meet
seas. Stories peopled by characters with
short common names (like Mark) that have far more going on than you would
suspect. I want to cover vast distances
without leaving the house, pepper my landscapes with appropriate trees and
introduce ‘marram grass’ like I mean business.
I want to tell the tale of what happens when a milliner meets a
collector of rare feathers. </span></div>jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-90343950738379591602011-09-29T12:18:00.004+00:002011-09-29T13:48:41.071+00:00the spare room<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc_FlhQ3XPOENeEw2IK1AZKfP97fv7mElZauSXdgTgziUKYQl3Zx90VzRG6dWawtSGfsYW6E0Bnwwc0b4iOtMOpPBMPDmGk-uwJQlfYcjLP-U5uoGIlD9EQ9gR0fcOLf6e2yI0Ng/s1600/spare+room.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc_FlhQ3XPOENeEw2IK1AZKfP97fv7mElZauSXdgTgziUKYQl3Zx90VzRG6dWawtSGfsYW6E0Bnwwc0b4iOtMOpPBMPDmGk-uwJQlfYcjLP-U5uoGIlD9EQ9gR0fcOLf6e2yI0Ng/s400/spare+room.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">[inspired by the title of a novel by <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spare-Room-Helen-Garner/dp/1847672671/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317298579&sr=8-1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Helen Garner</span></a>]</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">
</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">If we had a spare room we’d make good use of it. We’d throw it open and welcome allsorts to
come and stay - objects rather than people.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">A drawer full of post-it-notes and not just the yellow
ones. Another bulging with inner tubes
in various sizes, to guard against all manner of deflation. And one for that novel by Emma Donoghue that
we have two copies of as where else better?
Nestled next to the little rice cooking ball that looks like a robot
planet, that so appealed in the catalogue, shiny with potential just as any
robot planet would be, but which we’ve never used.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">A small shelf of books - the handful we have truly loved and
can’t bear to part with. Another with
framed photos of those people we’ve parted with and can’t bear to love. A row of jars containing nothing but air,
sealed inside on memorable days. A
bundle of envelopes that once held letters in various forms, the typed and the
handwritten, the cryptic, coded and downright blunt. The letters themselves have gone but the envelopes
bear witness to our first encounters with bad news in its many guises.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">Coppers in a pot just in case we ever find something worth
buying for just one or two pence. A dish
full of seeds collected from things grown in our garden – things we didn’t plant,
but which grew from previous seeds deposited by passing creatures. And a pill box brimful of apostrophes - the
should have used, overused and those kept handy just in case. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: verdana;">
</span>jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-49192112777633680792011-09-04T18:13:00.002+00:002011-09-04T18:19:55.645+00:00gold mining<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In January and July this year I paddled in the <a href="http://ariverofstones.blogspot.com/">River of Stones</a> and panned for my own nuggets of <a href="http://soundofshingle.blogspot.com/">daily truth</a>.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think it's high time I re-polished my nuggets and dangled them here to delight those who prefer truth when it sparkles and burns and buys it's way into all the most (un)desirable places.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm_udM241Ka7hhAGWWrdtajqC5eAYnbeEFX2S8oznt5VOAL06XBKhRARVYwjK-1W1mfQgkpfLK92qolM18MjMBFVTKrTHPE-x8mHa9KYzx_Ny4t6A12lWdJ9gFYSY_UMwuPiFjHQ/s1600/1.1.11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm_udM241Ka7hhAGWWrdtajqC5eAYnbeEFX2S8oznt5VOAL06XBKhRARVYwjK-1W1mfQgkpfLK92qolM18MjMBFVTKrTHPE-x8mHa9KYzx_Ny4t6A12lWdJ9gFYSY_UMwuPiFjHQ/s640/1.1.11.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Inevitably drawn to pale foods he was the sort of man to heap his plate with potatoes and spend the meal searching for his meat. To drink two pints of milk straight from a summer doorstep and smile away the morning as they curdled gently within. To think of his mother whenever he caught himself looking at a woman's breasts - remembering her force feeding him rice pudding, and withholding blancmange when he'd been bad.</span><br />
<br />jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-83449557823789678512011-08-12T12:03:00.005+00:002011-09-04T18:00:27.012+00:00I predict a riot<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNRRyjLQfZ8DaQ0OTgXn8OTIfPrypb9mxjgAPNnWJkxDZUL_BIbz-T0UzgRSfSP9-Uo8GlfizQAWUi95GYuhrX-ys7r3GZ60xDXlbxkFR3jeZZ9cqMxQjp4N3eweeX8aFidAZx3w/s1600/dino.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5639939044470975794" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNRRyjLQfZ8DaQ0OTgXn8OTIfPrypb9mxjgAPNnWJkxDZUL_BIbz-T0UzgRSfSP9-Uo8GlfizQAWUi95GYuhrX-ys7r3GZ60xDXlbxkFR3jeZZ9cqMxQjp4N3eweeX8aFidAZx3w/s400/dino.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 316px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>‘… violence is embedded in public spaces whether visible or not, because public spaces are responsive to violence even before the violence has occurred, through the physical design.’</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Jen Berean & Pat Foster (PoCA magazine)</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The child barely manages to post the empty crisp packet into the bin before his mother drags him onwards. He looks back hoping to catch a glimpse as it starts to crackle and smoke. He scrapes his shoe along the edge of the kerbstone, throwing out an anchor to slow their progress, but all he leaves is a slight red scuff that melts and slowly dribbles toward the gutter. A police car passes and he pictures it upside down, end over end, any way but this – much more fun than flipping triangles in maths class. His mother says he has an overactive imagination although she struggles to keep the syllables in their rightful place.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The mother drags him onwards, just another bag of shopping she can barely afford only without the handles. He bulges, he sags, he makes her arm ache, he threatens to spill his contents across the pavement at any moment. They stop by a shop, the mother staring at the screen of her mobile phone, decoding abbreviated declarations of love from the latest in a long line of abbreviated lovers. The child exhales. His breath a hazy cloud on the shop window. In this he draws – not letters or hearts or faces – but jagged lines that divide and collide to form little pieces of steamed glass. A map of how this window might come apart.</span></div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-81481588198838748152010-05-28T11:52:00.000+00:002010-05-28T11:53:42.495+00:00where the wild things are<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">spotted last sunday. baby birds times two. the collared dove not yet smooth, and darker than it will become. like brewed tea taken less milky. the sparrow still fluffed with down the colour of ash. a little phoenix. both hopeless against the wind, content to go wherever it takes them.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">*****</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">at the corner point of the roof next door is a strip of metal that forms a curl. a roofer’s flourish it looks like it should support a hanging basket although that would float far to high for belief, watering or enjoyment. this afternoon, one foot on the tile, another on the curl, stands a crow. looking to each cardinal direction in turn. sparkling in the sun. if black can be said to sparkle.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">***** </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">this morning. a small green beetle-bug comes through the door. perhaps wind blown, perhaps self propelled. it lands on my hand. I try to shake it off, I am reading. it weaves between my fingers, round the back and in between. it has a long body, not a round one. I flick it off and it skids across my page. I grab it and feel it rattling slightly in my fist. like a word you can’t quite remember. I cast it out the door, badly. it sails towards the little bleached fir that we plan to plant round the front to replace the one that we uprooted at the end of last year. the one that had grown too big for us and for itself. but beetle-bug falls short, and lands in a web. I hope it gets free. I am reading but I would rather it was still stuck to me than to that web.</span></span></span></p>jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-23477443611000286932010-03-25T12:54:00.000+00:002013-01-24T11:05:03.578+00:00101 ways to write about rain<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Sometimes it seems like there’s a lot of it about. So, in the spirit of ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ I aim to get to know each and every drop.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"> </span></span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">the rain started like a rumour. a whisper at the back of the classroom. a secret passed on under the breath. a hastily scribbled note on folded scrap paper. she knew what was happening behind her back. she knew it was coming for her. yet again she’d be caught in a cloudburst.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"> *****</span></span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">your eyes are like rainclouds. filling. filling the sky. no wind. no movement. some light. not much. blankety and grey. comforting in their familiarity but largely unwelcome on a summer day. all day they linger. they stay. but drop not a drop. they glower but never shower. you threaten to rain. but don’t.</span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"> *****</span></span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">false alarm rain. a few spots that linger in the air but don’t drop. that hang there to create the impression of rain. like a raindrop mobile above a baby that never breathes. enough to get you up off the sofa, out of your book. to bring you to the window. out the back door to bring in the washing. while the drops hang still.</span></span></span></div>
jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-44822732736892120932010-03-18T13:40:00.001+00:002010-03-18T13:45:28.125+00:00what a difference a day makes<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">today is all I have to do. brown blankets to the power of two. strawberry tea brewed strong with one heaped sweet. listen to short CDs, boys with guitars and easy accents. finger nails tap in time on the rim of this mug. net curtains parted slightly, hooked by a thread on a thorn on a pot plant. the street outside, a dagger shape slicing into view. a scrappy bookmark of the place I left off, that I’m meant to pick up again. but not today.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br /></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">* * * * *</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"><br /></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">the garden grew indistinct. she thought she was falling asleep with her eyes open. but it was just a sea mist creeping through. not rolling in the way they usually do, steering round corners and piping between trees. this one seemed to form in the air itself. in every place between here and the distance the air grew thicker and the view thinner. as if something was turning down the volume on this tuesday afternoon.</span></span></span></p>jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-30842833914153866672010-03-01T10:45:00.003+00:002010-03-01T10:51:42.281+00:00patchwork prose<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4frmQ3XFB22PXuo4qpJvpDWqUGUnhyl0TqPi8fLKb2i6mSw7N8nz9eyIUECGHHDIdW-aLk9jVR9X97_Re9VmC1AtgHuOFzY9Y8-9IT-DIsmb8Lrqub-o3TdHk5SckBolh-IyG6A/s1600-h/diaries.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 354px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4frmQ3XFB22PXuo4qpJvpDWqUGUnhyl0TqPi8fLKb2i6mSw7N8nz9eyIUECGHHDIdW-aLk9jVR9X97_Re9VmC1AtgHuOFzY9Y8-9IT-DIsmb8Lrqub-o3TdHk5SckBolh-IyG6A/s400/diaries.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443614963649716002" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">I’ve always been drawn to mosaics, jigsaws and patchwork.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Anything that aims to make a whole out of small somethings.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">I also regularly need to revisit the question of why I write.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">It feels reckless to do it without understanding my motivation.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">I’m not the type of person who would climb a mountain simply because it’s there.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">And the answer I’ve often come to is that I write to keep record.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Noting the daily in an effort to distinguish the uniqueness of each.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">I think that’s a major reason why haiku suits me.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Each is a little patch, and seen together they suggest some kind of record of experience.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">A patchwork of my days.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Of course I like my flights of fancy too, my wild imaginings.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Perhaps these are my play, where I fling the patched cape around my shoulders and pretend to be a kaleidoscopic witch for the day.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">I’ve dabbled with reading diaries before, but never fully embraced them.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Plath’s big green volume has been bowing my bookshelf for years.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">But recently I’ve dipped my toe into May Sarton’s coastal account shared in The House by the Sea.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">And I’m astounded at how much I’m finding there, how much relevance to my todays considering Sarton’s todays were almost forty years ago.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">I admire a diary keeper - their bravery as they allow me to hear their confession.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">The way they aren’t ashamed to be so indulgent as to write about themselves day after day.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Perhaps we all hope to create something that will outlive and outlast us.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Some people bear children to meet this need, while some of us prefer to make something we can burn if we change our minds.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">Today I shall start to read the first entry in the fictional diary of Ruth which runs through Thaw, the third novel from Fiona Robyn.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">I’m interested to see how Ruth uses her diary, and if you are too you can read along for the next three months at <a href="http://read-thaw.blogspot.com/"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;">Thaw</span></b></a>.</span></span></span></p>jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-32836800125386789882010-02-19T12:05:00.001+00:002010-02-19T12:08:22.668+00:00unrecognisable truths<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">I always enjoy spending time browsing through the posts at <a href="http://onemillionfootnotes.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;">One Million Footnotes</span></a>, not least because the most interesting text recognition scrambles appear when I comment there. And perhaps influenced by the mood of the place, sometimes I can’t help but make up sentences to nest these unexpected words.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">A recent dubious flock hatched the following -</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">He said he admired my <b>fulogo</b> and I admitted I had waited years for it to bloom that profusely.</span></li></ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;color:#666666;"><br /></span></div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">As they lifted the <b>deadverd</b> stones from their mahogany chest and laid them into a perfect circle they knew that tonight was the night it would happen.</span></li></ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;color:#666666;"><br /></span></div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">How ever much her grandmother combed or wetted them with spittle, she could never calm those unruly <b>efrai</b> that danced around her ears.</span></li></ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;color:#666666;"><br /></span></div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">The seeds of the <b>pandea</b> were bitter between his teeth. But they made his dreams taste sweet.</span></li></ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;color:#666666;"><br /></span></div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">The <b>odabil</b> was lost overboard, just as they rounded the lighthouse. It sunk slowly to the seabed and sometime later was appropriated by a shy hermit crab.</span></li></ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;color:#666666;"><br /></span></div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">It wasn’t the first case of <b>outterea</b> they had recorded, but it was the worst. It didn’t quite kill the villagers, but they were left distinctly altered, unaware that they’d made it into the record books.</span></li></ul><p></p>jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-47801988900668205902010-02-14T11:23:00.003+00:002010-02-14T11:27:05.508+00:00a 3-ply valentine<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD8Tgo7EgQpmcozrwUqiJmlpLyDbgHT5ASpuVerYKbabFZlQBOp9k1FkAGCOwE12iWNTvXY5VHJfOueUxYDOx1xnJ7myWJ0p-bOTsudagTc8YIGm9HYKEQYMKAZwX2qNsBaXy1Lw/s1600-h/paperheart.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD8Tgo7EgQpmcozrwUqiJmlpLyDbgHT5ASpuVerYKbabFZlQBOp9k1FkAGCOwE12iWNTvXY5VHJfOueUxYDOx1xnJ7myWJ0p-bOTsudagTc8YIGm9HYKEQYMKAZwX2qNsBaXy1Lw/s400/paperheart.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438058477357102226" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">This is the tissue that carried two drops of oil of eucalyptus. That lay folded beneath your pillow. That let you sleep and dream away the fever. That helped you be a hummingbird.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">This is the tissue that you fashioned into a soft envelope. To treasure the eyelash. That you found between the pages of a second hand paperback. The day you fell in love with a stranger.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">This is the tissue you clutched. That </span></span></span><st1:time minute="0" hour="0"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">midnight</span></span></span></st1:time><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;"> we shared secrets. The ones you’d stood on for years. The ones that started to eat you from the feet up.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">This is the tissue that caught your hayfever tears. Walking through the fields. Swigging cherry wine from the bottle. Looking down at the village we’d outgrown.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">This is the tissue that blew overboard. Out on deck. Cross Channel ferry. Smiling and watching the others look seasick.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">This is the tissue you found stuffed down the back of the sofa. As you sat with your coffee cooling. On the first Valentine’s day without a card.</span></span></span></p>jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17571725.post-31414102536749659742010-02-10T15:22:00.001+00:002010-02-10T15:22:38.126+00:00suburban myths<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#666666;">I don’t believe in these snowflakes. The sky is laughing and running with scissors. It’s breaking the rules and snipping the corners off clouds, and dropping the litter in my garden. The trees and the shrubs are dancing with agitation. The wind is getting on their nerves as they try to make plans for spring.</span></span></span></p>jemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08181038873568527264noreply@blogger.com3