041. Don't look back

Change of emphasis today, I went browsing over at Bruce Spear's blog again, and found a load of wonderful images of faces, characters. Among them, the anonymous faces of advertisements, or posters, or who knows what, behind glass. I picked n° 29, I love the condensation on the hair of the bloke. And I have been dying to use the shot below of a graffitied window from Berlin... words - free form god-knows what... Let me know what you think!

the faces say "you want to let us out" at least that's what you think until scrunching the glass under your feet you realise they said only "look at you" and you can't hide from their eyes following that point behind your ear you would turn and look but they would follow and you would look like a cat trying to chase its tail

pause paws pause paws pause pause paws 

you think you are being clever but their expressions are verging on condescending squeak goes the glass crumbs trapped in the pattern on the soles of your shoes squeak squeak skreeeeek as you start to run away

040. Drifting

Continuing with yesterday's (somewhat downbeat) theme, I came across Kelli Costa's picture of a drooping lily, her "Day 38" picture reminiscent of an un-cocooning, a metamorphosis where the flower becomes insect, all bedraggled wings. I put it together with a drifting apart image; with petals, stamens drifted from the lilies I had bought for Seville.

You drifted unwillingly into my country today.

I was not there, I had crawled a little closer

to your country, that was once mine too.

039. petals

The sun today, brought to mind all the clichés about hammers, and saunas; the sheer weight of it pushing me down, slumped in my office with the fan fingering warm air around and I swell like patted dough. 6hours of workshop too, talking about how we should talk more, or talk to different people, or talk in a different way or talk more often. Or just talk to hear ourselves talk. I hate the way my voice becomes strident when I want people to shut up. Picked again for circles, for some edginess, and for the title is Carianne Garside's piece "inside things you hold"

We are not in sync today. I guess that is the way things are but we usually both wilfully ignore that and concentrate on the things we want to see in each other. Today my flower, you do not metaphorically show me your stamen, we are not burst together from the bud where we lay tightly furled, and today it seems as though we do not want that again. Reaching out to the light and time is so short. We let the inside things drop. When the petals fall, we may look back and regret.

038. what is between us?

today, looking for more circles, to develop the on/off/round again we go theme that has been in my head for a couple of weeks... but no, that wasn't what came to inspire me in the end. A similar meme, picked up from Silvana's "The space between us (detail)", contrasted against a filled space...

                                        you have left a space there for me
                    of course I think it is on purpose
                                                            you knew I would step into it, after all
                                                                                why is it that I fill you up, should it
                    not be the other way around; but
                                                            you would not step into what is between
                                         us, you would not be that bold,
                                                                                that deliberate;. it is okay for me to take
                                                            the lead, wait there for me, I am all
                                        of your free spirit.

037. Circles

Inspired by Amrita Mishra's wonderful poem "sundays" and following my nose on the whole circle-pictures thing which seem to be cropping up in my mind recently. It was a circles thing that inspired the picture for "Peeling" - not to remove the mystery but I was taking pictures of circular things in my flat - bowls of chocolates, wide tinned candles, dirty saucepans, yoghurt pot lids...

I wasted my time                                                                                 

sitting on the beach                                                                                 

against the warm wood                                                                                 

waiting for the sun to                                                                                 

come out again, press its                                                                                 

warmth into me, and                                                                                 

round we go in                                                                                 

circles again                                                                                 

036. Geometry

It rained today. This was not a bad thing as it meant I "stayed in" while my friends walked the wet beach, and I got the >language>place blog carnival edition #7 99% completed. I am pleased with it, I like the grid style of the presentation - it's less "stained glass window" than the effect I first had in mind, but the tiles needed to be a certain size for the "about" pieces to be legible ( I don't have a version of photoshop that allows you to slice images & link different parts to different things). Anyway, enough rambling, today I matched a geometric image from Steve Veilleux with a piece done for the carnival.

The hard edges are a warm blue and the soft edges cold

geometry pushing into the vortex

035. Patterns

Still beside the seaside, but a less obvious picture today - inspired by found patterns at Sina's blog. Her day 33 piece was called "A dog eared sky"; my companion piece is called "Table top"

you do not believe in science, in molecules, but in the nebulosity you call nature. a crystal is only for you a shard of pretty stone, brought to sparkles by hard work polishing. if I try to explain, that a thing is not blue, it is simply reflecting that wavelength of light, you tell me that atoms don't really exist. you won't back down but on this I will not defer, and so we both go on believing we are right in our minds. I know that solid matter only seems so, that it is made up of points and space and atomic forces, and space. But no matter how, I can't put my finger into the space...

034. Shoreline

Today I'm continuing with the "on the edge" theme (and making use of the 80+ photographs I took this day!) - and using Katie Bentley's "Fallow Shoreline" as a jump off point.

if only... the line between you and I was like this. foaming with life yet fleeting and insubstantial, ever renewing, a constant flirting of the land and sea. you, of course, would be the land, solid and obdurate, me the sea,  the forever tidal in-out-in-out of my feelings for you. we won't mention the air.

033 - edges

away for a long weekend but trying to keep up / not fall too far behind. Honoured to see the response that day 32 got, thank you everyone, and decided to keep up the "re-inspiring" theme and choose a piece from Billie Williams - "desolation". I'm hoping to build something although I don't know what yet... listening to "Darkness on the edge of town" from Bruce Springsteen, and remembering Michelle Elvy's "On the edge" theme for Edition #6 of the >language>place carnival (Edition #7 is my other current project, in between beach wanderings)

whether flattened by waves

sculpted into "duin"

the wind here

is what determines me,

nothing more

032. Peeling

I don't know whether it is the done thing to use a piece that you originally inspired as further inspiration, it seems a little incestuous, but ever since I saw Steve Veilleux's Day 20 piece "Reflections in my mind" I wanted to do something with it. Also in the mix, still, Sabin Aell's wonderful series "With Softness it unveiled", the peeling off of layers, revealing themselves as something extraordinary, blended with the twists and turns and glanced mirrors in reflections. And, hopefully, building something a little better out of yesterdays theme...

I thought we were interwoven, that our thoughts and habits were as entangled as our limbs. Your breath and mine pooled together, molecules forever mingled. You spooned behind me, shelter, safety, and because I was you and you were me we protected each other from stray loneliness, spiking outside. Sweat filmed between us and whose it was, no-one could tell, as if which of us it originated with mattered anyway.
And you, you spoilt this, you peeled away from me.

031. I'm not myself

I've loved the inspiring piece for today's since I first saw it on day 11, carefully copied into my inspirations OneNote notebook, waiting for me to come up with something suitable... I'm not sure I can do it justice, but I will try anyway, the piece is Mindy Brays "Almost Dismissed", mine a savaged self portrait. Self image has been a topic of discussion with my friends just recently, so it felt like the right time for an attempt.

Don't, it stings. Her brain ticks, wheels within weals.
Let me help
No, it's your fault. You wanted to leave.
Sighs, almost. Maybe the next time. You are centripetal.

030. Skirts

Today, so much choice, I didn't know where to start, and so I procrastinated half the day away... head in novel, snoozing in bed, watching repeats on DVD... More playing with the dozens of lily photographs, more interesting shapes as they fade, dessicate.
Finally I got it whittled down to Beth Stone's "Wedding Bells are Ringing", as it occurred to me that despite the bells ringing at 7am, 7pm, sometime around teatime on weekdays and Saturdays (and a lot more on Sundays); I have never seen a wedding at the Evangelical church across the road. Pfff... bury my head back in the books... pick out the wisdoms that I will continue to ignore.

"I am happy on my own until I hear other people enjoying themselves, and have to compare myself to them. If there were no other people I wouldn't feel alone" - Steph Swainston; The Year of our War

"Wisdom never comes from staying at home and avoiding unhappiness. In order to become wise you must go out into the world and be tossed about in its storms, stripped bare by terrible experiences and confused by good ones" - Steph Swainston; The Modern World

Steph Swainston on Amazon here

029. Restrictions

Sabin Aell has some fantastic photographs on the beauty of everyday things - if you haven't seen this series I won't spoil it by telling you what the image is, but urge you to get over there and have a look. I love the restricted colour palette of her pieces, and so I've paired it with a limited colour piece of my own; a not-an-everyday object, the less-than-obdurate stone-scapes of the Burren. A longer poem of mine inspired by the Burren landscape is at The Camel Saloon.

It is more exciting, when it shouldn't be                        

at all. I can't explain the pull                                                  

any other way, it's not me                        

that is holding the thread taut, not                                                  

this time, don't you agree                        

028. Dancing

I'm putting together Edition #7 of the >language>place blog carnival at the moment, with the theme unwritten language / unnamed places; and I have been browsing through some submissions on the subject of the sound of words and the language of music. Very appropriate then that I choose Dorothee's "Dancers" image for today...

The waves dance, the tide is coming in and they push each other on to greater feats of daring, reaching further and further up the beach, dazzling each other in sparkling splashes, iridiscent in the glowing northern sunlight. And oh, the sun, its light flirting with the water, its warmth felt bodily, pressing against the sea in the dance. Over and over, the rhythm of the folding, spurling water. Sun, oxygen, water; drawing the red rust jewels from the abandoned axle, and who knows how that ended up here being rocked in the slamming beat of the waves, which unfortunate tractor met its end on a nearby coast? But it is all one now, the swirling shimmy, a primal waltz. Fall in with me.

027. Veils

I am tired today, and my mind is foggy. The perfect simplicity of Nicolette's "Corner" is my inspiration, and I paired it with an image called "Light Curtain". It was a visual poem, the original can be seen here, but today the words don't feel right. The last couple of pieces I've done have included some fiction, but I am not 100% satisfied with them, and yet, they were the best I could come up with at the time, which is probably why I am not satisfied... vicious circles... like the mosquito bites on my arms... just at table top height , so irritable when typing.

                             I showed you
                                                          everything that was behind the veil
                             but, now,
                                                          I think we both prefer that
                             I put it back.

026. Fragile

Today's post is inspired by two of my favourite-so-far participants in the 100 days project, and a newbie. I know there is so much to see in the project, and with the type of pieces I am doing I do have a bias towards the visual artists when posting; I hope to be able to use others words more to inspire me in the future, but here is a joint attempt...
Stand up Sina (Day 26 - just gorgeous) and Catherine (Iceland slipping through my thoughts, and allowing me to bring out this picture of twigs growing alongside a waterfall); and a hand-clap to George Sebastian-Coleman (Conversations 3) for the following words of wisdom.
Woman: Routine. Routine kills everything. When you date, the other person is the thing that makes things special. When you marry, they're just part of the everyday.

He will not take a risk to be with me because sparks fade, he says. But, oh, how fragile is his world, their world if it must be protected from the real world? It is spring, he cannot help but send out those tendrils, seeking sweetness and lightness and fun and escape. They look so pretty, so hopeful, I don't want to yank them up and put them on the compost pile, but I know it is easier now than to hew at a thickened trunk. Unless, like me, he is a baobab; hollow insides waiting for a glut of water to ride out the parched seasons.

025. U/S bahn

Rifling through other peoples blogs, sticky fingered, I happened on the image below from Bruce Spear, and stuck, happy to be reminded of the recent weekend in Berlin. Although wandering round like a tourist, with my camera dangling from my wrist (as I was a tourist) for some reason I did not take a picture of the ubiquitous patterned glass in the U-Bahn trains, although I wanted to. Thinking of the U-Bahns going over ground and the S-Bahns going underground, and trying not to think of Wombles. Think of journeys, fictions. The vanishing point of  a railway platform.

Kicking at the floor with the thickened rubber at your toes. You would pace if you thought you could get away with it. I look at my feet too, between my knees, the metal grille chair pushing puckers into the backs of my thighs. Your train will come first, the signs say, in 6min, a plastic yellow glow against the black background. 9min for me. Dazed. I would have thought we should have something to say to each other. But then I thought what we did should have felt more, more of something. Intimate, yeah, that's the word. My head hangs and you don't lift it. The air pushes ahead of the train and we fumble for each others hands. Warm still, your fingers. You stand at the doorway as it slides past you shut. Make a "Call You" sign and then you slide away. If my train had come first you would have made me get on it. You are curving smaller, out of reach, into the dark. You are on the circle line. How long will I have to wait for you to come around again?

024. Cinderella

Marcus Speh's collaboration with his daughter has led to some deft myth-making in the retelling of fairy stories, and I picked his Day 13 post as today's inspiration; cheating slightly again by drawing on a Fairy Tale collection I did in 2010. Perhaps that is part of being a magpie, getting the shiny things out of the cupboard and looking at them again, maybe in a new light, maybe displaying them for new friends to see.

In the old days, they wanted me to make then look rich and pretty so they could catch the eye of someone rich, naive and influential. Simpler times, blonde ambition reached no further than catching their prince and having their dream day in the whitest frilliest of dresses with the envious crowds looking on.

It's easier for them now of course, the thirst for fame is as strong, if not stronger than the hunger for a fairytale wedding. Easier for me too, even those that still believe in me I send away from my door. 

I am getting too old to be moved by all of those bright eager faces, and besides the fad these days is for self-belief, not belief in magic. If they don't have that in spades the reality shows will grind them up anyway, just as surely as the days of domestic boredom drove the Cinderellas to become manipulative politicking courtiers.

Now, where's an old woman to get a nice cup of tea from? I call out to Charlotte, still as ugly as ever, to bring me refreshments and hand me the remote control. Britain's Got Talent is just starting...

023. Here be dragons

I was inspired today (again) by Catherine Singer's Icelandic pictures (I have to ration myself or half of my posts would be on Iceland too); and also Barbara Laucius's beach pictures, of broken down driftwood, entitled Beach Worn. Taking Staffa (day 21) into the mix also, along with the eye-shaped curves in Carianne Garside's days 20-22, and admiring the word "basalt", the heaviness and solidity of it, the shiny wet blackness...

  

      Breaking the surface, basalt scales
            drip, dully sheened; sun warming
                  anthracite back. Flex wing muscles,
                        expecting a geological grinding, but
                              silent. Earthbound in the step-off
                                    point between sea and layered airs,
                                          leap to regain fluidity. Somersaults
                                                of pewter, tumbling your buildings.

022. Flowers

With Valerie Brodie's unfurling unfolding rose in my minds eye, I bought flowers in the market this morning. The cobblestones and pavements are at last beginning to be replaced after the market square has been half dug up for what seems like months. Fine grit gets into my open toed sandals. Orange lilies for Seville. Which led me back to Katie Bentley's Rose Cathedral. Growth and death; beauty and religion. My thoughts are too convoluted for straight words today.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these [...] Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. 

This bible quote seems a fine exhortation of passivity, and is followed up with the suggestive phrase "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," with its hints that thinking about tomorrow today allows evil to spill over into the future. For God's sake little children, do not think about the future or you will ruin it.

To be blunt, it's not pleasant to think that Seville is a corpse, that we will all be corpses in the future; but not thinking about it seems to be a case of wilful self-delusion. Blind faith if you will.

021. Fire

Today, Sina Bo Bina of 100daysofsun.blogspot.com provided the inspiration with a fluid, spilling fiery piece called Fire in Mind. She shows us two pictures, steps in the creative process, and I love the first version, for me it has more energy than the later one. My piece alongside comes from a 2x 6 haiku set called Robbed & Mugged written in 2010. The haiku for the piece is also strangely apt today; relationships never seem to tie off neatly.

Repeated goodbyes

touched to fiery sparks, puddled

blisters left to heal.

020. Folie à deux

The talented Nicolette Wong has long been a must-read writer for me, particularly her blog "Meditations in an Emergency", and she is also participating in the 100 days project with "Le bleu de ciel" I am always in awe of her words, and the way they send my thoughts spinning, skittering... Todays effort is inspired by her day 16 post "Folly".

                                                    I love you

You love me?                                                    

                                                    Yes

I don't feel it...                                                    

[silence]

How can I tell?                                                    

                                                    Can't you tell?

I want to love you.                                                    

                                                    But you don't?

I don't know...                                                    

019. Space

The space of absence surrounds me. Last night I cleared out the toys, baskets, cushions he used; emptied the litter tray (and who would have ever thought it would be possible to get emotional about yellowed silicate with the odd dried out turd in it?)
I am so glad I had found this project far enough ahead of Monday for me to have something to focus on, to subtly finger into my mind and hold off the imagined flickers of moving orange at the corner of my perception. Even if the absence spills over here, as in the picture I chose today from Billie Williams again - Sunset Beach; positioned opposite a Rothko-esque expanse of wet sand and wet sky on the north-east coast of England. You might not recognise it as the same beach as Gone Surfing from day 015 - the wonders of photoshop (to reflect Dorothee Lang's musings in Day 19)

N

O

T

(t)here

018. I want a fluffy kitten tree

Brendan Ford's day 14 piece is the one that speaks to me, an extract from his "Blackouts" below.

for some, life does stop

i wish i could have planted him

grown another one

maybe it would take the edge off

being the one who said

yes, kill him

or, to sound nicer 

put him to sleep

017. Blocks

Janelle Stone again provided an image which chimed exactly with the things I was seeing around me in Berlin, her "construction" below left with its subtle shadows and grey tones was in my head when I saw the "Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas" on a scorching hot Saturday. A controversial monument, its scale is the immediately impressive thing about it, but being able to walk into the middle of the field of blocks, see the undulating ground beneath and feel each block has been placed just so, that creeps up on you and makes you contemplate...

you                                                                                                                                             

pile                    things 

                                                                           on me

think my 

                                               corners

should                                                                  be 

                                                                           smoothed

                       where                              is 

my 

                        space?

Postscript: 
At 21:44, 6th June, I "murdered" my cat Seville
 after a sudden illness