012. Calendar

As the mechanical church bells begin their twice-daily more-on-Sundays clanging, I remember to turn over the calendar to the month of June. Unconscious thoughts about passing time aside, I rarely remember to do this on the 1st of the month, something I can only put down to my own inertia since I am usually in possession of a calendar with plenty of beautiful pictures to make changing them a joy.

This years calendar is an exclusive, digital prints from Sandra Davies, and as I say goodbye to May's picture I am reminded of the diverse reactions this got as the T10 Canvas challenge (Sandra's favourite piece, by Coraline J Thompson is here). June's picture is a blurred balcony in New Orleans, at night, with Reddy Brek oaty glowing light from the window behind it.

My picture today is from Ireland, from the hull of a rusting boat in Connemara, and below, the 6S piece I wrote for it. T10 (thinkingten.com) and more particularly for me 6S (sixsentences.ning.com) have been important playgrounds for practising writing, and I am looking forward to meeting the online voices again this year.

Epithelia

It is like looking at skin, if the skin was magnified and viewed through brick tinted glasses.
It is a boatskin, made of rust and flaky paint; terracotta and pannacotta paint in clotted cream splodges, thick layers on top of each other and the rust crystallising through them.
Water gets under the paint and oxygen works its magic, transmuting the steel into ruddy puff pastry.
Epidermal rust, skin deep and all of the skin, cellular rust, a ferrous bark.
The boat, once an erythrocyte caught in the tidal flow, but now moored up, scabbed and crusted.
Dead but resisting disintegration.