074. Dreams

I was struck by the dreamlike nature of Sabin Aell's "Anatomy of Time" series of digital images, and wanted to create something similarly æthereal and dreamlike... Not sure that I am there yet but I like the picture as a step on the way. And yes, more sunflowers, I find them quite an ugly flower when they are cut, no subtlety to them at all, but as they grow  and fade in their natural cycle, and of course up close, they are quite absorbing.

I try to describe the matter of fact weird logic of dreams to him, knowing that he says he does not dream. I have not been at his side long enough to know if this is true, not lain awake and watched his eyelids flicker with the muscular stirrings of the orb underneath. The logic is not if x then y, but and then. Like, I was playing with my brother in the garden and then we were back at school and you were there; and the transition is so seamless it must of course be the logical thing to happen next.
In my waking life I miss the transitions, but sometimes I am in a different place to the one I thought I was in, and I don't know how it ended up that way, I say. He thinks that is feeble, he wants to think that only conscious decisions count; I rail against this, inwardly. Us is not a conscious decision, each time he thinks about it consciously, with his conscience, we end, for a while. I wish he would dream.

057. Green

Rain, hot tubs, tequila, bourbon, late arrivals into the early morning. The greenness of the trees and the mountains here in North Carolina is surprising after the spine-sapping heat in Michigan last weekend. And so Sabin Aell's Day 48 image of tangled jewellery with it's green threads appealed to me today... and yes, more development on the abstract foam theme...

The porch goes all the way around the house. I walk out of the living room, people converse under the verandah in clusters and I mingle on through to the empty side. I watch the leaves recoil and jump when a fat raindrop hits them directly, and listen to the murmur of conversation from around the corner. I like being alone but I also want to be found, if not by you then I guess one of the others would do. It doesn't matter if it is the tall one, or the sympathetic one, or the one who has trouble hearing, like me; it doesn't matter who if it isn't you, but it does matter that no-one does find me.

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.

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