natural history

Ideas are a rare breed -- an endangered species. Fascinating but troublesome, they need their environment in perfect balance to thrive. Otherwise they will fade before your eyes -- they will wink out like so many Tinkerbells.

This world wasn't made for ideas -- this world is changing and the idea is losing the habitat it depends upon. Ideas are growing thin -- bones as silhouettes and see-through flesh -- they fossilise moment by moment.

They need space - to become, to believe. Wooded clearings and deserted beaches - they crave abandoned theatres of sand and leaves. Places they can stretch and grow, and try out their tumbles and turns when no-one is watching them. They will only show themselves then they are well rehearsed.

They are getting breathless -- struggling to draw enough air to let them sing. Others are stealing their air -- people who misuse it. Voices who idle away vowels and consonants -- making words and phrases that amount to nothing. Talk so small it gets blown away on the breeze -- and even the dust doesn't wave it goodbye.

unnatural advocacy

The Devils Handbook

13 things you should know about the devil - fact or fiction - you decide

Don't be fooled into thinking he exists in the singular.

Don’t expect to hear him coming - sometimes he whispers while sometimes he roars.

He doesn't need an appointment.

He won't always answer when you call.

His breath smells of peppermint while his eyes are the colour of cloves.

Don't think you will never see him fall because he lives in the basement -- he has ladders that reach for the sky.

His house may be crumbling but the roof is propped up by a cruciform beam.

Sometimes he appears so vile as to turn your stomach, then turns on the charm to make you fall at his feet and ask for his hand as he asks for your heart -- on a plate for his supper or his tea.

He's a patchwork puppet of all your fears and dreams.

He is a woman in disguise.

Sometimes he crawls through the forest, sometimes he walks through the door.

Sometimes he sails the seas in a paper boat made from stolen love letters.

He’s at his most dangerous when he appears most vulnerable -- curled asleep on his bed of angel hair -- as while he sleeps sweetly he dreams a dream of being you.

they linger in the air

She asks me quietly - she asks me with perfect pronunciation - she asks me for a story. And this is what I give her.





A girl walks into a room. A room that used to be mine, before I moved on, before I left it to hang lonely on an unpainted wall. She throws open the windows and doors. She throws down a shabby suitcase. A suitcase that is always with her, that wears thin and needs a new patch every year.

She opens the case and climbs inside. She walks about within for a week or two - then emerges all fabric rebirth, fraying and hopeful with clutter in her hands. Some stamps, some coloured pieces of paper, a breadcrumb, a shell, and a feather. Souvenirs from the places she has been, from the palaces she has cleaned.

She lays these little treasures on her windowsill - to tempt you to a closer look. A tease to draw you into her room and her suitcase.

The sun stops by for a brief examination, but soon departs unimpressed - typical of his kind. A smirking bird claims the feather - an unlikely case of lost property - as the feather is white while he is grey.

beginning to see the light

When I play god I sit at my table - the one with one leg shorter than the others. I never start with a level playing field. I could fold the history of this world and tuck it under to even things up - but I like to watch you shake and slide and cling on for dear life.

When I play god I dress for the occasion. Wrapped in a blanket of grey shot through with streaks of light. I am perfumed with a rumble of ozone and vengeance.




I play make believe. I play lets pretend my puppets have free will. When I’m thirsty I drink tea and slurp up the dregs of your fortunes. Even though they make me choke, I laugh at my own little joke.

I play devils advocate. I give you a box of matches, stand back, and hold my breath while you burn. When I play god my puppets play dead.

heart of darkness

Horror is important. It reminds you that you can bleed. It scares the life out of you just to show you how safe you are.

Horror knows its business. It knows to keep things simple, to play with your childhood fears - being alone, in the dark, with a man behind the door.

Horror knows the power of pace. When to go slow, to make you think the danger is over, and when to bombard with sensory overload.

Horror knows to balance sound and its absence. The silence sets the scene for the scream and the screaming ceases for you to enjoy the silence - while it lasts…

Horror kills your desire to dream. It throws you over its shoulder and carries you to a locked room where it leaves you to wait and shake while the nightmares seep up through the floor.

alarm

fortune

antidote

overexposure

your favourite stranger

Its always the same. The snow starts to fall and he recoils, screws up his face and takes two steps back from the window. He leaves us wondering what went wrong between him and that charmed white visitor. When did they fall out - and what was said?

Maybe its a matter of weight. He is so solid, so bound to the earth beneath him. He cannot grasp her delight at drifting slowly down from somewhere so high. Maybe its all to do with colour. Or her silence of colour. One as highly patterned as he - all definite swirls of brown and yellow and green - must be disappointed in someone so pale, so vague. Or maybe its her coldness where he is heat. A rock drawn from a fire now extinguished but still smouldering - we hold our hands against him to warm us through these winters that she weaves.

We may never know his reasons - so we stand, mesmerised, watching him watching her - till snow turns to rain and he turns to go.

fractured elegies

We live with stained glass minds. Medieval minds. All individual pieces and improbable angles. Colours that huddle together to create stylised images of who we want to be. Forever chasing see-through heroes greater than you or me.

Melted minds. Childrens minds. Bright and bold like butterflies that flew too near the sun. Curtains hung in windows near the atom bomb.

Maddened minds. Fragments held together by leaden lines. Time held tight in a rickety frame. Overly weighty and overly thick - we let little light through. Just enough to cast ragged rainbows that slide in daily repetition across your floor.

we fall through water

Give me one hundred words.
I’ll give you a girl
writing stories in the sand
that you walk across
from here to there.

Words you wont notice.
Words the tide carries away.
A girl with feathers in her hair -
writing about you because
she thinks enough to care
to scratch your story there.

A girl who writes
with a twig, broken from a tree
that she grew all by herself -
a twig so rough and splintered
but still held so tightly -

a twig with a leaf attached -
a leaf that sometimes
I think could be me.

the collector

answers badges books bruises butterflies buttons cards cares cars cassettes choices diamonds disappointments doubts dreams effigies enemies erasers facts fears feathers friends hopes ideas insects leaves lines links matchsticks memories nightmares ornaments patches pencils photos postcards posters punctures questions regrets scares scars shadows shells spoons stamps tattoos teeth wishes

red tears are shed on grey

go outside to find the middle of nowhere

She asked me to look at the world differently. She asked me to squint. She asked me to take apart my surroundings blink by blink.

She was wrong. This is commonplace. We never see the maddening loop in its entirety. We greet each moment in isolation - unconnected from the one before. The present merely greases the way for the future, while the past whispers inadequacies in its ear.

‘the past has no significance and the future can’t be pictured’ Amanda Claybaugh

We are cameras. Primed and snap happy. We find peace if we accept that we hold only pieces - if we learn to value the single frame.

Like the man who takes photos of his sky. Day after day, with only the colour and the light changing. The same sky, the same skyline, the same sigh.

scream of consciousness

I taste the woods in my mouth - in my breathing in - in my breathing out - little pieces of me - lost in my breathing out - a little more each time

I taste the woods - I taste them growing - I taste them burning - the way the embers fell against your skin - the way they caught in your fur - the way I was you and he was her

I taste - smouldering ghosts - charred remains of beings destroyed - animal memory - held by heat - the afterburn - the flashfire - where they run - where they hide

you know why

the sunflowers died
when only yesterday
they shined

the puddle ripples
an endless
goodbye

dream of consciousness

they wake - crawl from their beds - blinking and dusty and dream-soaked - their little hands still clutching the leaves that fell with them as they fell from the dreamtrees - they always fail the climb - they never reach the top

they raise their heavy heads - they look to the sun - hanging bright in every window - brighter in every sky - and wonder if this could be spring - so early in the day, so early in the year

they nod and know that anything is possible in their world - though not necessarily welcome - in their world winter is good, winter is welcome - as who else will wrap them in grey blankets and let them sleep a season away

monument

slowing down the metronome

Im not a sun worshipper, though I can still smile at a sunny summer day. But given a choice I would choose the darkness. Light has its place in my world, but only light that does something special - that works a little harder. Light unusual, light thats lively - maybe moving or changing colour. Light that initiates dialogue - that contributes something of itself to my experience.

‘Bright light does not discover, but drives away beauty.’ Peter Campbell


Sometimes we should sample the delights of blindness imposed by the complete lack of light. Constantly harassed by the demand to see, we are never truly left alone with our thoughts. There is always something to distract and seduce you. Everything burns too vividly, leaving no chance for vague impressions or hinted forms. No chance to use our hands to explore our environment - let alone our sense of smell. No challenge to use our animal nature to find our way home.