011. Patio

today's post (& indeed my p art ici patio n in the 100days2011 project) is inspired by Dorothee Lang's "To Look"

now to read more at onehundreddays.net and fill in the gaps ;)

today,
blog browsing
late to the party
the patio of p art ici patio n
new burden of expectation
                                                        100 days
                                                        and a backlog
                                                        burning double ended candle
                                                                                                                today it rains
                                                                                                                battering fuchsias
                                                                                                                I reach outside of myself

010. Volcanic Coffee

Silvana Mondo's pieces (Fildzana) on Bosnian coffee, the sugar & cream crusts almost volcanic to look at, provided the inspiration for this catch up post.

cold crusts 

mask the magma warmth

stir here to break apart

release through

an anti-peristaltic throat.

009. Iceland

Catherine Singer's theme for 100 days is Iceland. How could I resist? Her image, possibly Þingvellir, is winterbound, stark and eerily beautiful. I visited in the summer, when Iceland was a land of light, and the image I chose is of Sólfar (The Sun Voyager, by Jón Gunnar Árnason). The colours echo (foreshadow, if I was not working backwards) the coffee and cream glacier in day 10.

From the Orkneyinga saga (written by an unknown Icelander in the early 13th century) - secondly inspired by Marcus Speh's use of mediaeval images & characters in 100 days and nights


Next morning when it was light they went to look for runagate men among the isles if any had got away;  and each was slain on the spot as he stood.  Then earl Einar took to saying these words:  “I know not what I see in Rinansey, sometimes it lifts itself up, but sometimes it lays itself down, that is either a bird or a man, and we will go to it.”  There they found Halfdan long-leg, and Einar made them carve an eagle on his back with a sword, and cut the ribs all from the backbone, and draw the lungs there out, and gave him to Odin for the victory he had won then Einar sung this:

                  “Man broad-bearded oft is outlawed,
                  Many a one, for stealing sheep;
                  But in isles here I for felling
                  Mighty Harold’s youthful son:
                  Risk hangs o’er me, say the freemen,
                  From the king so courage-full,
                  Harold’s shield I’ve hewn a hole in,
                  None can call that dint in doubt.”

008. windows

YB Poetry has a "windows thing" edition coming out soon - here is a preview picture by Dorothee Lang. I was reminded of this when browsing through some of the intriguing blogs in the 100 days 2011 group page, and finding the image below left from Janelle Stone; and my own photo to help inspire something for the YB magazine.

what are the windows that look onto those windows?

                 sometimes, I see movement

                 a flicker across the space

                 someone at home

                 by/with themselves

                 as I gaze outwards    

                                                                                                 sometimes I wave at my reflection

                                                                                                 there could be an army

                                                                                                 of watchers behind the

                                                                                                 bland mirror. Mostly I cross the space

                                                                                                 quickly, shrink from the outside

                                                                                                 in

007. trees

Barbara Laucius is celebrating natural beauty in her 100 days project bearbonesart.blogspot.com/ which brought me to contemplate her picture of birches in an Alaskan spring-not-yet-summer. My mind making connections to the blog carnival >language>place (which I will host around 4 weeks from today) from the first carnival I heard of, a tree carnival. Making connections through the carnival and also through this project. Also in my head the following refrain from a Nirvana song. And the poem I wrote for the lightning struck tree I pass on my way to work.

     My girl, my girl, don't lie to me
     Tell me where did you sleep last night

     In the pines, in the pines
     Where the sun don't ever shine
     I would shiver the whole night through 

                                                                                                                                     blasted

                                                                                                                                     blasted but beautiful still

                                                                                                                                     in its way, most days

                                                                                                                                     I drive right by

                                                                                                                                     but I stopped this morning,

                                                                                                                                     I wanted to see

                                                                                                                                     if it still lived

                                                                                                                                     with its heart splintered so

006. Faded glories

Inspired by Steve Veilleux's day 2 post "Porch Sitters"; taking me back to New Orleans on a hot Labour Day weekend. I had many photographs of deliberately faded walls, doors, flaking paint and windowsills; but in the end I went with an photo composite/composition from a piece I wrote while in NoLa titled The City, The River, The Wasteland.

The Wasteland
Of course I can't tell you these things in real life. You left the dam in place but the river flowing and of course, of course there came a time when I burst my banks. I flooded you out of me. The salt crusted over my life, settled down on the surface as a reminder. I am in the wasted Lower 9th now and telling you about the city and the river would be a senseless vandalism of my hastily rebuilt levees. You will never know how it felt to be there.

005. Surface

More time to catch up, over a long weekend, with the dizzying display of work that I stumbled across when I was first introduced to the project (on day 11), one of the pieces that caught my eye then, and I have searched for since, was "A clean (enough) slate" by Sina Bo Bina. I loved the idea of the broken surface, and had just returned from Israel, where my image of the surface of the Dead Sea comes from, and also building on my practicemakesperfect post with the piece below.

surface splits, dividing and fractal                                                                                    

finger under the surface. pulled                                                                                    

epidermis the skin of the earth pushes                                                                                    

the natal fluid, flows to the edge                                                                                    

gasps and dries. crusted coral                                                                                    

polyps too stubby to function,                                                                                    

cracked chasms and dessicated                                                                                    

corruption, my new face                                                                                    

004. Fate

Another catch-up post, harking back to my first glimpse of the delightfully surreal Fran Forman, which I now realise was from last years 100 days... so much to catch up with still... I combined this with Nicolette Wong's Day 11 image entitled Revelation, and sought my future in the Tarot cards. It seems the news was not so good, so I teamed my haiku (mugged 1) together with the warning, and the memory of warnings ignored...

The second card, placed above the significator, represents Air. It describes your spirit, process of thought, and the influence of reason.

The Fool, when reversed: 

Apathy, negligence, and dangerous carelessness. Unquenchable wanderlust. Obsession with someone or something. Losing all sense of proportion. Foolhardy adventuring and lack of interest in critical matters. Immature or unrealistic ideals. Strange impulses and desires coming from unexpected sources. Vanity, delirium, folly, and oblivion.

003. Spring

Valerie's wistful "Digging in the dirt" was today's inspiration, thinking on the seasons. I associate dandelion clocks with long summers, feet burning on the warm tarmac of the path next to the bank beside the garden... My brother and I, we blow the seeds away and tease each other about wetting the bed. So Valerie's image seems early, and mine is late, taken on OSU campus in Spring, it is a hangover from the previous autumn, and a haiku below.

                           at the beginning
                           and end I am threadbare, no
                           wonder you move on

002. Reverse

I always wanted to go to Iceland, as I mention further on in this blog (since I am working backwards from day 11); and one of the reasons was to see a black sand beach, despite my Dad telling me I could do that in the North East of England when the coal dust washes up onto the shore. Catherine Singer has perfectly captured this in "The Heart is Mine", and started a new longing, for frozen sea...

Back to Black - Amy Winehouse
    You went back to what you knew,
    so far removed,
    from all that we went through.
    And I tread a troubled track,
    my odds are stacked,
    I go back to black ..

001. Gridlock

And so, day 1. Having started part way through I have been working backwards until I came to day 1. The conjunction of images I picked, and images I made was purely a serendipitous accident on the day I stumbled across the project; but it has grown from that into something more structured as time went by; an image, or occasionally words of inspiration, an new image made in my digital workshop, some notes about the day, or the inspiration, or the process, and the finally the writing. But today, only one image... at least until the end ;)

since 100 = 10x10; I will have a grid of pictures created for this project at the end. I love grids. This image is my bedroom wall, but all the walls in my flat have small square pictures at eye level. The frames (from IKEA) are very cheap, and I can chop and change the images as/if the mood takes me, shuffle them about on my walls. I'd love to have a 10x10 grid on a blank wall, but I'd have to bend down to see some of the pictures then...