096. Hotter than hell

Returning from a business trip, to the unseasonably warm Slovenia. 37°C outside, inside a rubber factory, well, it made outside feel cool. Storms delayed the flight, and the trains; and despite a minor panic thinking I'd got on one going in the wrong direction, I made it home only an hour after originally planned, time to take in the "beyond 100 days" thoughts. Partnered with Steve's "Oh Hell" picture, a picture inspired by Steve and Susan, from Dorothee's original.

                                  Smoke clouds drift
                                                                    cream splodges as Nero fiddles
                                                   time twists our foundations
                                              we are over cooked

080. Curvelines

Wow, day 80! With having uploaded/caught up 95% of my backlog over the weekend I started to feel "Oh no, there won't be enough time to do everything I wanted to do here," which is ridiculous as I know of several blogs where this 100days is just a section. I wanted to do something with Juan Muñoz sculptures but I can't find any decent resolution images unfortunately, so I used Antony Gormley again; and echo Dorothee's day 80 "Lines"

               I must go; chat tomorrow; catch you later; sorry had to dash

lines/lies               

               I know you are married but she does not know you cheat

lie to her               

               you don't need to set off on one of those curving sentences with me

a lie ally               

               tell me the truth; You were distracting but my life is elsewhere

I lie               

               I can take it because if I can't it will be done, hurry that time

fly               

073. Tall stories

Away for a long weekend, seeing the latest addition to the family (a 3 day old nephew) and spending time with the existing nieces so they don't feel left out of the attention loop. Wonderful family times, and it leaves me pondering on my lack of motherhood and all of that; a little deep for my first post back and trying to catch up; I'll carry on pondering and in the meantime let Dorothee's "miles" take me in a different direction... or maybe a parallel one...

I saw someone who looked like you today. He was a couple of inches taller than you, your age more or less; Annelise knew him and put him in the same school year as you. A little slimmer and he had more hair too. I think the hair was a mistake, it made him look slightly simple whereas your shaven dome adds some gravitas. I did not say it but "much needed" whispers through my thoughts whenever I think of you and gravitas in the same sentence. I did not stare at him, not overtly, but while he was there I watched from a distance, trying to see what was the same, what was different.
I think it was only that he had not touched me. He might have done, I was curious enough to find that an attractive idea, but you took away my sparkle and I did not even try to cast a glimmer his way. I thought about him catching me watching him. Him seeing my confusion and having his interest piqued even though I did not mean to, I only wanted to watch from a distance. Is that true? It is too long since you touched me.

071. Sunflower variations

While staying with my brother, I did plenty of playing in the garden with my nieces. Splashing pools, spraying hoses, swings, playing school, trampolines & hammocks. And taking pictures of some past-their-prime sunflowers, following on from Sina's series yesterday; and as always loving Billie's b&w photography & Dorothee's extreme cropping...

               come closer, come closer
                              see into the pieces of what I am
               that is no heart
                              organelles only
               more details make for
                              more fascination
                                             come closer

062. Shaped

Today the vibrant colours of Dorothee's "pyramide" struck me, and the beautiful crossing lines as you go around and around the image. Of course, in playing with it, I did almost lose these, they are faint and underpinning.

The rules constrain me

ironwork corset

pulling me into shape 

060. Fireflies

As the dusk fell last night, I was sitting with my feet in a pool, and the temperature slid all the way down to 95°F. And then a marvellous thing happened.

fireflies

evaporated

from the lawn

as the sun fell

down

058. Towers

Katie Bentley's "Moral Agency" and Dorothee's "names" inspired today's image, the redness and regularity of the triangles bringing to mind the Forth road bridge, and jumping from there via the Eiffel tower to the Tokyo tower. I visited on the day a typhoon came calling, the orange red metal seemed vibrant against the greyness of the sky, wind and rain.

I lay on the ground with my arms out, under the tower, looking up at it's foreshortened shape. Triangles turn into curves, hard edges into soft ones. I can't quite see how it is done, but I think about the reverse. If practice makes perfect I can will myself into the armoured cage. There are some gaps that you could get through, but then there are gaps between the atoms themselves and we all seem solid. Orange red threads shimmer around me as I wrap myself in the net.
I lay on the ground with my arms out and they think I fell from the tower.

046. Sandwritten

Ignoring for the moment that I just had an Amazon delivery of 7 books, that are itching at the corner of my vision... I was intrigued when during my >language>place blog carnival hosting, I came across the concept of asemic writing. Hosting the carnival allowed me to feature Sean Burn, and Dorothee Lang with Karyn Eisler; and led, through there to facebook groups, and a world of half-sensical words. Step on in...

I would have written there, right across your toenails on the shoreline; I knew the waters would lap my words away but I liked the impermanence. You would have gotten the wrong idea, had I crouched at your feet. Or, maybe, not...

044. Ladders

Inspired again by Dorothee Lang, following her series on cropping and editing photographs. When it comes to experimenting with pictures, I am not organised/methodical/whatever-it-is enough to track the process of editing images that I do in photoshop. I call it playing, I compulsively play around with the different tools (for a while I lost my normal brushes and only had some really weird ones to play with that did not give me any sort of desired effect; but now I found them again I am experimenting again...

He showed me ladders to the sky, propped up resting against the blue-whiteness. It was blind faith that led me to put my hand on the smooth wood, not the rungs, the sides. Do the sides of ladders have a name? I suppose, six steps up, that it doesn't really matter. I am already farther away from the ground than I am comfortable with, but I am not terrified today. Slide my hand again, grasping the juncture, letting my fingers curl around the upright. He watches me. I am not sure where he is, sometimes he seems ahead, beckoning me on, sometimes a safety net behind. I think he must be climbing a parallel ladder. The rungs fade into a solid air, not visible, but still I keep climbing. He is not visible but still, still I keep on. More like I stick my toes into the sky and it hangs on to them for me, grasps my wrists. Is this what faith in myself is like?

043. Silicate

More from Katie Bentley, her "Distressed Base" caught my eye, amoeba-like and stuck in my head while I mulled it over. And also I have brought in some extreme cropping, inspired by Dorothee, but I didn't save the photoshop files in the right versions or something so I can't demonstrate the size of the original... the sand piece below is ~7% of the total picture size, however...

                            no it does not feel rough
                            against my skin
                         smoothed down shells, rocks
                                                            worn
                            pushing the grains aside,
                            burrowing, cocooning, things
                         are different under the
                                                          surface

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.

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

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

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