063. As night falls

Inspired by Katie Bentley's "Isolated Event", and the Chicago night skyline. The storm rolled into town in a strangely subdued manner. The sky flashed, strobed, clouds were suddenly backlit and then they weren't. Sheet lightning, no forks, and no thunder to be heard either. Whether this was due to the traffic noise, or being in a talking group of people I'm not sure. Later in the hotel, behind plate glass I closed my eyes and the lightning didn't even register as I fell asleep.

the horizon looking away from the sea                                        

human horizon, we build with lights                                        

cover the land so that the dark                                        

is above us only, build skyscrapers                                        

and deck them out with lights too                                        

so we push the black away from us                                        

turn it to a burning orange                                        

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 

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.

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

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.

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.