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

093. Hope you have had a good day?

And as the days turn, and the weekends come around, the presence is withdrawn. The aggressive and damaged remoteness of Steve's "Butterfly Composition" snagged my thoughts today. And more Möbius lizards... slightly Giger-esque...

"Hope you have had a good day? x" he types today.
I won't embarrass either of us by pointing out that what he typed yesterday was very different. At least, I won't share it. No, leave me to come to my own conclusions about the shallowness of his interest, the excuses of how difficult it is to get away. Words from another, it's what we signed up for, blur in my head, so that even I forget I never said that. You make your bed... sometimes... sometimes I just crawl in there.

084. Effervescence

Hard to know what inspired today's pieces really, I loved Stephen's image - it reminded me of looking through the microscope at bits of plant back in pharmacy college days, before I changed direction (once again) to the "pure" chemistry side. Still hooked on lines and curves and developed the partnering image from Antony Gormley's "Clearing" again, with a nod to Steve Veilleux' image style...

Talking with you makes thoughts soda fountain through me, and I want to let these balloons fly free, admire their buoyancy, roundness, colour. But my sticky fibred mind clings, all cilia, fingering the thoughts and changing them. Building things with them, adding combinations together until the edifice of expectation is looming ahead of me, effervescence lost.

066. Loops

Tired, so tired. It's 7:30pm and I am already in my pyjamas. Mind not thinking properly, making loops around the whole thinking thing. With coming back from the heat in mid-west USA, to a cool and verdant Germany; and with a number of changes (actual or just scaring myself imagining the potential changes) it kind of feels like something has ended. I am not sure what. I pinched Steve's "Globes" today as it went with the loops in my head...

                                                            l      o      

                                                     d                  o

                                                 n                           p

                                                     u                  a

                                                            o      r         

051. Travelling

With Susan Gibb's wonderful piece "The Plane" and Steve Veilleux's "The Cube Unplugged No 2", the theme was really set for travelling half way across the world today. I put their pieces together, not really sure it's doing either of them justice, but I wanted to embellish on the box theme rather than planes being plucked from the sky... Against that, an early morning (very cropped) picture in the airport; not this morning as I was there some hours after sunrise, but a morning last week..

I folded my wings today too, not around you, not enveloping you in my prickly feather warmth. I folded them around myself, overheating in the warmth of my thoughts, the flames that are only fantasy. I left the ground, I flew, but it was cheating, not under my power but that of petrol fired whirlwinds.

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

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.

006. Faded glories

Inspired by Steve Veilleux's day 2 post "Porch Sitters"; taking me back to New Orleans on a hot Labour Day weekend. I had many photographs of deliberately faded walls, doors, flaking paint and windowsills; but in the end I went with an photo composite/composition from a piece I wrote while in NoLa titled The City, The River, The Wasteland.

The Wasteland
Of course I can't tell you these things in real life. You left the dam in place but the river flowing and of course, of course there came a time when I burst my banks. I flooded you out of me. The salt crusted over my life, settled down on the surface as a reminder. I am in the wasted Lower 9th now and telling you about the city and the river would be a senseless vandalism of my hastily rebuilt levees. You will never know how it felt to be there.