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.