Wednesday, June 15, 2011

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.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

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?

Monday, June 13, 2011

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...


Sunday, June 12, 2011

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.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

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.

Friday, June 10, 2011

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.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

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...                                                    

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

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

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

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

Monday, June 6, 2011

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