075. Children

Not really sure I can get down hugely coherent thoughts about motherhood (for me) here. Being of an age where it is probably too late to start thinking about it, I started thinking about it again. Bruce Spear's "No 52" and a mood shot of small girl (niece) going determinedly to play on the beach are the background for today's thoughts.

You realise, when you are around them, the truth of the glib line about children being the future. I am a genetic dead end, my DNA will not carry forward in time. I wonder if I should have a say in shaping the future, since I won't be there and neither will my genes. My familial genes will be there, my nieces and nephew will tread, full of purpose, into the generations as I will not; but the unchanging matrilineal markers that my mother introduced me to in more ways than one, they will not proceed, will not pass Go, they are cut from the pattern.

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

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?