practice makes perfect

Wintrospection: 001 - life, still

2011-11-16T06:17:00.000+01:00

Wintrospection: 001 - life, still

The first post in a winter 100 days project...

Project central is here and the facebook group page is here; if you're not already doing a little project like NaNoWriMo, why not stop by and have a go?

love internet browsing...

2011-11-05T13:07:00.001+01:00

aftermath

2011-10-29T11:16:00.000+02:00

My toenails are liquid jade, still. Our office cleaner told me yesterday, as far as I could tell as we were both speaking a language that was not ours, she said that I had lost my sparkle. My recently gold-dusted pearl fingernails show some of the ravages of last week, bitten and chipped.

I try to pace myself slowly, open the box and the plastic packet inside it, tip the pieces in to the base of the box, stirring up the grey green grey dust, and I start to attempt the jigsaw puzzle. Hoping that it will soothe me, that I will gradually (heavy handed metaphor alert) see things coming back together, making a harmonious whole, feel like I am making something in this world again.

My space is one hundred and seventeen square metres. I don't use it all, the patio, not for eight days now, not since we flickered around each other, wine in hands, you with a cigarette, both half wrapped in towels and nothing else and feeling the pinch of the cool night air. I don't use the space in the spare bedroom, except for drying washing when the weather outside isn't suitable. I am supposed to be buying a bed this weekend, a task I have set myself, it would mean going to the furniture store some kilometres away. But I looked at the on-line shop and there was nothing to inspire me so I am procrastinating instead.

Last night I heard a miaou, I opened the door and leaned out, but nothing. Sometimes, still, the former playmate of my departed cat still sits on the garden bench, but I suspect it is more for the peace and the sunlight and the absence of wind rather than the companionship of Seville's ghost.

My space is separated from the town centre by slightly tinted glass and swathes of muslin, about a foot too long for the floor-to-ceiling windows. Metres away, people are going about their lives. It is a long weekend here, a bank holiday, and I wonder if I will leave my space. I have showered but not dressed. One step at a time.

No one is reaching out to me. And I do not have the strength, the self-belief to reach out myself more than tentatively. I reached out yesterday, to a friend, and as there was no answer then I was prepared for the rebuff this morning. But I won't reach out again, at least not today. One step at a time.

I have done quite well, these last few days, at keeping you out of my thoughts. Minutes, several and consecutive went by at work where I did not pick at the wound. In my space though, I have nothing to think, nothing to say that isn't about you, or about the gap where I wanted you to be, and so I say nothing.

The jigsaw puzzle is a black and white picture by Escher, two drawing hands, which one is drawing the other? It is full of white noise. I know I won't finish it, it is too difficult and there are too many textures of grey.

And still, I think that if you were to call now and say you were sorry, that you were wrong, that things could be; the jewel of your reaching to me would slither under my skin and I would forgive you the hurt. The pieces would fall into place, and I would gather the empty space into myself and hide it back in my stomach where you cannot see it. Everything would look normal. Standing at the cliff to the future. One time to step out.

try

2011-10-23T12:45:00.000+02:00

what is a good bye?

2011-10-22T11:20:00.000+02:00

and so...

2011-10-21T21:48:00.000+02:00

and so it starts, the scratching at oneself, picking, peeling the skin, forcing the imperfections away to new pink under my gel-hardened fingernails
and yes, he did get in touch as soon as he could, and it is only my fault that I was not awake, not waiting devotedly for him to kick my heartbeat back into action, my fault that I was not there to pick up and pick myself up.
I do try not to be jealous, but every time we do get together, but somehow she seems to manufacture a drama, and the worst thing is, I think it is he who manufactures it. I know he feels guilt, he told me so, because we are open enough to say anything to each other. My guilt is a DNA double helix, curved around him and protein bonded. How can I have a good time and not be just a good time girl?

afterwards

2011-10-20T18:56:00.001+02:00

The half finished bottle of champagne rattles as the fridge door is opened, and my tired eyes, pushed in at the corners, take in the array of empty wine bottles on the kitchen worktop.
You have been unreachable all day, since we kissed each other goodbye, three or four times in the underground car park this morning, and even though I know it is because your phone doesn't work while you are in my country, still I feel the gap.
I watched the airport arrivals board online yesterday, calculating how long the drive was and when you would get here, and when the bell went I buzzed you in without even checking on the screen that it was you. Today I am checking your arrival at the other end, so I can make an informed guess when you will turn your phone back on and touch me with your thoughts. I forgot, in all the wonder of you being next to me, forgot to ask what flight you were on, and so I have a number of options, scenarios in my head; if you are on the first one, I should hear from you in the next twenty minutes, because right now, I know with sleepy certainty that you will call me first thing you do on landing.
By the time I have thought this through, that flight has landed, and I wait, with a glass of yesterdays pink fizz.

BluePrintReview book+lit blog: Magpie Days - Julia Davies

2011-10-18T06:00:00.000+02:00

BluePrintReview book+lit blog: Magpie Days - Julia Davies: In July and August, the 100 Days Project gathered story writers, poets, painters, photographers, filmmakers, musicians, and programmers together...

click above to see the BluePrintReview's blog review of my 100 Days project - please!

the highway code

2011-10-17T20:50:00.004+02:00

tomorrow we can say tomorrow, i said.
it made sense to me at the time, but maybe it is the infinite manyana, not sweet anticipation, a signpost telling me which way my life is flowing now

a kreisverkehr of course
the world as i know it will end, the day after tomorrow, and then it will restart, almost the same as it was before. you will not notice the difference, the drag of the stylus back into the groove.
the same tune playing.
i think about what i want. i think about what i get.

i am not being fair to you in many ways.

you always said that you had more important things than me.

i didn't want to believe it, i wanted to believe that if i only worked hard, then all the things i wanted would happen. they should, i would deserve it if only i really put my back into it.

i saw a sign the other day, in a smallish Chinese city. the lanes were marked - one for cars, the other for carts. no-one took any notice of them, and cars drove in three unofficial traffic streams across the two lanes, punctuated by weaving and swerving. a heavy handed metaphor for my life, three into two doesn't work.

but i say, tomorrow we can say tomorrow.

instead of doing the sensible thing.

written for the anniversary edition of the >language>place blog carnival

Notice period

2011-10-15T21:51:00.000+02:00

I didn't notice so much today, not because there was nothing to notice, but because my head was away across a quarter of the world, ninety degrees sliding around the surface of the earth, where you were, wondering what you were doing. More accurately, I was wondering whether you were dreaming about me, since you had another four hours until your normal waking time, and so I was not paying attention to the girls on their phones in hooker-chic clothes, or the women walking away from the wet market with their red plastic bags, or the concrete dust in the air as the high speed rail bridge with its bamboo exoskeleton heaved itself into life above me.

I sat in the taxi with the driver in the front seat, patient and impatient as only the Chinese can be, watching the things happening in the street while he had popped into the tiled building, with its darkened rust streaks from the window bars, to carry out his business. The baby on my lap, his heartbeat, his breathing twice as fast as mine even though he was asleep, it got me thinking about how all creatures have an allocated number of heartbeats, and a shrews heart beats as many times in its short life as a humans heart does in seventy years.

It annoyed me that he didn't even notice that my thoughts were elsewhere, that my heartbeat had started to thump to a different tune, to your tune, and not to his and he just saw me and the baby and thought all was well; it annoyed me but it was not something I could say to him, which is why I am telling you, even though I know you won't really understand.

Sometimes it is too much trouble to notice things.

A notice on description

2011-09-26T19:15:00.000+02:00

Today, I noticed things.

I noticed the squished conkers crunching again under the car tyres as I drove to work, and the conker-like man, a Danny DeVito lookalike, from the back at least, a shiny tan leather jacket and a nut brown tonsure exposing the paler crown.

I saw that again, now for the third day, the traffic lights at the crossroads were literally on the blink, flashing only the amber light to all directions while above the clouded sky looked like grey metallic velvet, rubbed up the wrong way.

Blue emergency lights reflected briefly from the river as I crossed the bridge, and at the next lights I saw the raindrops/smear/raindrops/smear patten on the windscreen of the car in front; looking in my wing mirror the rain fell like straw, all pale sticks lit up by the headlights of the car behind.

I hadn't noticed the drive to work for a while, I am not sure for how long, and as I observe the bus ooze up into the lay-by beside me, and a nearly teenage girl start running towards it, towards us, determination in every swing of the arm and bounce of the shoulder bag; as I see this I think about why I notice things today.

It is you, you feel like a permanent enough part of my life that I can pass the times we type to each with trivia, confidence that sometime soon I can lay my cloak of words over you and snuggle underneath with you; and I notice, notice that all this is only built from words and I don't know whether to press the send button and bring you to my side...

also posted at 6S here, this post was prompted (not only by a drive to work) but by a conversation in 6S whereby it was implied that poor description was only to be expected due to depression. I have been depressed before, and expect I will be again, but I always felt some of my best writing pieces to be products of perhaps a strong depressive state albeit mixed with frustration and anger at myself. Maybe I wanted to prove I could write in a more optimistic frame of mind too!

edition #10

2011-09-26T05:59:00.002+02:00

of the >language>place blog carnival is out, as ever it is astonishing in the range of ideas covered. Check it out below!

Heart, soul, bollocks...

2011-09-22T19:52:00.000+02:00

I made a decision recently, to remain exiled, well distant (non-melodramatically speaking) from my cultural landscape, meine Heimat, my home land. To remain in a job and land that is not England, but culturally very similar to it, at least in many areas. A well off Western European democracy, at least until rocked by the changing economic climate from which no country seems immune. Similar reality tv shows, cooking ones, pop idols, superstars, selling your house. The same things interest the German & English people, it seems.

It started me wondering, what exactly is my cultural landscape? What is it that I miss most about England now that I do not live there? Fish and chips, roast beef dinners? Not so much as curry, good Bradford curry takeaway... Marmite, stuffing, the supermarkets being open on Sunday so that Saturday is the heave of relief at another work week finished, a day of idling and pleasing myself, and Sunday is the day of sorting stuff out. I have to be more organised here, think ahead. But wait, this is things, not culture...

English music, often original, at least in the sub-culture; all I hear here are chart hits, Americana and the occasional Kult-hit from the 80's. English books... thank you Amazon. There is nothing like browsing in a bookshop, so I make sure to do this when I go home, make sure I pick up new authors that might be interesting rather than collecting the back catalogue of ones I already know about. English film, well, I tend not to watch too many films anyway, do occasionally watch English ones (as opposed to Hollywood ones) as well as independent films - Chinese, Korean, Mexican, German... I am not sure I would call watching a film culture though, although conversely, English tv is something I miss - surreal sit-coms, comedy that celebrates cleverness and word-play (think QI, Have I got news for you, Whose line is it anyway?) but even then they are green triangles in a Quality Street morass of toffee.

My heart and soul... well, the logical scientist part of me says, they are where they have always been, firmly embedded in my chest, thank you very much. The emotional part that says I am so far from loved ones gets battered down most of the time with logic - they are a phone call away, it is a short plane ride if there was an emergency, even if you lived in England you may not live close enough to pop in. My heart says if I made myself more available to people they would love me more... my soul says, bollocks.

The landscape for sure, I miss the sea. My friends excuse my strangeness, Sie ist auf der Insel, we are expected to be strange there. The island-ness of England is not something I miss so much as the edge; at the shore there is a definite edge. Not so much a yearning across the space for something, more a content-ness to be on the edge, distant from clamour, time to watch the tide, the waves wash in and out and feel the liquid pulse of the world. There is perhaps a little bit more distance in most English psyches, and that perhaps explains best why I chose to remain wistfully, nostalgically away for a couple more years.

There is no conclusion, I will keep on wondering what a cultural landscape means, whether I am a citizen of Europe rather than a country, whether home is where you live or where you would like to live, and pine quietly for the edge of the Insel.

Over

2011-08-28T14:26:00.000+02:00

As of today, the 100days2011 project is over; and there goes my excuse for not posting in here so often...
In the meantime, I am creating issuu publications (4 quarters) and the first one is below...

Open publication - Free publishing - More 100days

Möbius lizard

2011-08-21T18:00:00.000+02:00

the reptile

did not like

staying so still

for my sketchpad

Just when you thought it was safe...

2011-08-07T22:25:00.000+02:00

... along comes another Blog Carnival!

This month, I am featured in The Festival of the Trees, on a stunning edition #62! Hosted by Kate Natik at "Beyond the Brambles" the theme is "Lessons I learned from a Tree"

My "Blasted" image & poem is featured, & do make sure to check out the other tree blog posts ;)

100 days project

2011-08-06T17:53:00.000+02:00

A pictorial update... we are 78 days in & I am 5 days behind; I started 10days behind everyone else, on day 11 so I have made up some ground! I've been playing around with collecting all the images together for an issuu publication when complete, and am loving the patchwork grid/stained glass effect; and the best part about looking at the completed-so-far grid is realising just how much I have already done.

5th & 56th

2011-08-04T19:34:00.000+02:00

Even the media had picked up on it. "A timely return and a timely warning."
Strangely, those who thought of three risk-boosting behaviours rated their chances of getting heart disease to be higher than those who thought of eight.
No dust dancing. Put one before the other and begin.
You were real.

An activity suggested by Sina at 100 Days of Sun and Art

1. The Snowman: Jo Nesbo
2. The Summer Tree: Guy Gavriel Kay
3. Risk (the science and Politics of Fear): Dan Gardner
4. Kraken: China Miéville
5. The seven days of Peter Crumb: Jonny Glynn
6. Henry and June: Anaïs Nin

madness?

2011-08-04T18:45:00.002+02:00

I talk to you
when you are
not there

this is called
writing

cushions

2011-07-17T16:20:00.001+02:00

They get up and leave, muttering about what they will do next as they circle, swirl. The cushion on the sofa, sitting, part of the furniture. You would not say anything to the cushion, not explain yourself, not invite the cushion to join in.

You can have a one to one relationship with a cushion, it is always going to be there for you, you can put it down & leave it and most times, unless someone else moved it, the cushion will be there for you when you get back. But why would you? Sure, it is comforting, it is nice to snuggle into, warm and enfolding. It won't complain if you are not there for a while, it won't seem any different to you if you haven't been there. Maybe a little colder to start with, like when you turn a pillow over, a refreshing coolness that disappears with your body warmth.

Group dynamics are interesting things. I sit as passive as a cushion, waiting. People display around me. I think about need. On one hand, I hate the cushion role, but then I also always hated the need to be of importance, of consequence, the ache to be noticed and appreciated. My whole persona comes from this need, sarcastic party girl with a (fading) work ethic. And it is not the right persona for me at the moment. It is the one people like, people relate to, if only they don't have to be reminded of the need beneath. Hell, I don't like to be reminded of it, so I am sure that no-one else does either.

You, you upset me when you suggest I should be looking out for someone else. You asked me if anyone took my fancy, on this weekend of like-soul finding. I was taken aback, I said it wasn't that sort of a weekend. And then I watched the others, who did find other souls. Maybe they had more soul to offer, to share, to attract. Mine, too closely associated with need, mine is too small to stand observation, too small to share. I need it, I want to have something left inside in case you would look my way again.

I make the breakfast, bake biscuits in the oven and my new role must be that of an enabler; a mother hen with no chicks of my own. I don't want chicks, I don't know whether people notice this or not. I am called an angel of mercy for doing the practical nurturing things and no-one sees that I need nurture too.

You tell me that you had a wonderful time last night, somewhere else in the world, far from me. We talk but it does not bring us closer today. The need is too close to the surface for me to cope with this. I think about how I could cut this off, but I know I won't; I need the emotional swings to make me feel alive, to at least let me know that I am not a cushion.

look!

2011-07-11T00:14:00.000+02:00

Look at who is reading the HoW book from last year! Very apt as this next weekend is HoW2 time ;)

Dorothee Lang, virtual notes

Sandwritten

2011-07-09T09:36:00.001+02:00

I haven't wanted to post here for a while, didn't want to move the carnival down the page, but that's not really the point of a blog ;) Having discovered it through hosting the carnival, I have been captivated by the idea of asemic writing, and have been playing around with some images for the 100days project, and decided to collect some below...

edition #7: unwritten language / unnamed places

2011-06-25T21:00:00.012+02:00

I hope you all have as much fun browsing through this as I did putting it together!
Edition #8 will be hosted by Walter Bjorkman at "Qwik bake Synthetics".
Thank you for supporting the carnival (homepage here)

Edition #7: Sean Burn

2011-06-25T10:23:00.008+02:00

Today I am presenting something different - a guest piece for Edition #7 of the blog Carnival >language>place.

Artist Sean Burn honours us with an extract from his latest exhibition, semtxt.

semtxt. a sequence of one word visual poems. surrounded, often defined by words, we also use language to free ourselves. and language is alive as this exhibition shows. semtxt is a body of visual poetry in charcoal. it produces a backdrop akin to jackson pollocks drip paintings by furious action-writing and rewriting over and over repetitively to reclaim languages. this produces a layer of 'asemic' language - which you can look at but cannot 'read'. then a new word which collides existing words in new combinations is erased out of this dense layer of charcoal to comment on many aspects of contemporary life including medicine, mental health, media, nationhood, sexuality, warfare, family, environment etc. radical antipsychiatrists, deleuze/guattari talk about the lines of our life - both the formal ones - & also the more subliminal, that mark our unique voyages. i try following these ones in my work, giving voice to alternatives, these strategies for survival

the exhibition runs 23rd june to 7th july 2011, at oriel beaufort, temple street, llandrindod wells. ld1 5hg. wales. It is open tuesdays and wednesdays 10am to 4pm, other times by appointment; telephone 01597-8222777 for further information.

Coming soon!

2011-06-22T06:52:00.000+02:00

Submissions are open until 24th June!

Look out for the new edition of the carnival here next week!

More info here

Still alive...

2011-06-20T20:59:00.000+02:00

Just spending time working on the upcoming >language>place blog carnival (I want it to be perfect!) and the absorbing 100 days project... catch me at either of those places!

100 days project

2011-06-10T21:48:00.001+02:00

Brought across from the Magpie Days blog, which is mostly keeping me going through an unsettled time. See onehundreddays.net for further details and the other participants in this absorbing project.

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)

Submission call

2011-06-01T12:35:00.001+02:00

Still enjoying the blog carnival edition #6, over at Glow Worm. This morning I have gone back and re-read the section Poetry playing at the edge. "Enjoying" again Sharon Cooper's haunting line "daily there is less of me". This afternoon, who knows which one(s) I will dip into. I love holidays, lazy days off work when everyone else is busy, especially if they are not filled with strangely unshiny silver vertical rain, like yesterday.

And now, the call for submissions to edition #7 - the theme for edition #7 is "unwritten language / unnamed places"

How is spoken language different to the written word? How does an unknown language sound? How do you read the language of the body? How does music dovetail with language? Can pictures speak languages?
How do you remember places? Many of my favourite places are too small for names, so you have to describe them, "You know, the beach that appears at low tide, in that corner between the house and the pier with the stone steps, up the road from the coastguard station..."
Sometimes places become synonymous with language, this place is simply "beach" or "moor" or "city" or "home".
Some places may not have names, or may have too many names.

The edition is planned for end of June, submissions are open from June 1st to June 24th. Click here for details about how to join in the Carnival. Send an e-mail to me at "langplace AT gmail DOT com", and include the link to your blog entry, and a brief description of your language/place contribution (1-2 sentences) You do not have to send themed entries, but I will prefer them ;)

You can find out more about the carnival here, and more about it's originator, Dorothee Lang at her blog virtual notes. You can also find a complete listing of the editions on the >language>place page here.

Still enjoying

2011-06-01T12:11:00.003+02:00

the blog carnival edition #6, over at Glow Worm. This morning I have gone back and re-read the section Poetry playing at the edge. This afternoon, who knows which one(s) I will dip into. I love holidays, lazy days off work when everyone else is there, especially if they are not filled with strangely unshiny silver vertical rain, like yesterday.

And now, the call for submissions to edition #7 - the theme for edition #7 is "unwritten language / unnamed places"

How is spoken language different to the written word? How does an unknown language sound? How do you read the language of the body? How does music dovetail with language? Can pictures speak languages?

How do you remember places? Many of my favourite places are too small for names, so you have to describe them, "You know, the beach that appears at low tide, in that corner between the house and the pier with the stone steps, up the road from the coastguard station..."

Sometimes places become synonymous with language, this place is simply "beach" or "moor" or "city" or "home".

Some places may not have names, or may have too many names.

The edition is planned for end of June, submissions are open from June 1st to June 24th. Click here for details about how to join in the Carnival. You do not have to send themed entries.

100 days 2011

2011-05-31T16:24:00.000+02:00

A new project ;)

onehundreddays.net

http://jkdaviespractice100days2011.blogspot.com

if

2011-05-31T11:11:00.000+02:00

Jerusalem

2011-05-30T00:00:00.003+02:00

I have never been a religious person, so I had mixed feelings on visiting Jerusalem, centrepiece of organised religion and religious dispute too. We drove there after a fraught day of work, and a slightly fraught drive, although as we arrived early evening most of the traffic queued it's way in the opposite direction, not so much streaming as leaching from the centre.

The old city walls were pale and warm in the evening light, like bleached sandstone. We entered the old city through the Jaffa gate and plunged through into the Suq al-Bazar, a narrow stepped street dividing the Christian and Armenian quarters. My feet slid on the polished stones, more marble than sandstone, worn shiny rather than down. In the street were triangular wedges abutting the steps, positioned to allow cartwheels to go up and down without being shaken apart, but standing on them in flip-flop sandals took the soles away from you.

My friend led us surely through the streets, and quickly, I had time to notice the side streets, the doors set into walls and cave-like shops behind them, time to notice the graffiti, and the sun piercing shafts through the lace-like stonework on the tops of the walls. We abruptly turned a corner and went down steps into a courtyard and into the church beyond, this turned out to be the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. By the door we entered, a slab of stone that Christ's body was said to have laid upon, and several women kneeling, rubbing it with cloths.

Naively, I did not know that this is where the body of Christ was supposed to lay, I suppose I assumed that with the resurrection that there was no tomb. I read later that it is also the site of the crucifixion. My friend told me that the church was administered by several different Christian sects, and in the queue for access to the tomb, the group behind mentioned that wars would break out over the placing of candles. The arches drew the eye upwards to the domed ceiling as we waited.

I was a little unsure of being there, knowing that I do not believe, but that other people do, I hate to be a tourist of belief. I told myself it was silly to be so timid, as this was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of opportunity, and decided to go into the Aedicule. It was irrelevant anyhow, although dressed in a T-shirt like a couple of my (male) colleagues, the guardian decided I was improperly dressed and turned me away.

After looking at a couple of the other sites within the church, we left and again followed my friend. Unsure of the way, we went through back streets in the Muslim quarter, walking through boys and young men playing street football games. I hadn't realised that even in the Old City, it was still a living neighbourhood, it was heartening to see that it was not only a tourist trap. Past a street of shops, under cover, a high roofed tunnel where men sat and smoked through water pipes. A boy ran alongside us and told us "It's closed", and sure enough, as we headed to the end of the street, I saw the outline of the Dome of the Rock; and guards told us that it was closed to non-Muslims at that time.

Back out, taking a left, and through another broad tunnel, after sending our bags through a security tunnel, we emerged into the broad expanse under the Western Wall (the presumably politically correct term for the Wailing Wall). More barriers. There was a wall which allowed people to look over at the Jewish worshippers, and they were themselves segregated into a men's and women's side. The sun was setting behind us, and we walked up steps to a viewing point to watch it finally disappear. The battery in my camera died.

Back through the Armenian quarter, where the shops were all closing up, most of the tour buses having left for the day, and retracing some of our steps up the polished stone steps. Stopping for a coffee by the Jaffa gate and reflecting. I had iced chocolate, the cocoa grains gritty with ice against my tongue as the temperature swooped downwards.

I think I approached Jerusalem with an open mind. I loved the streets and the stones and the buildings, the archways, some vaulted and turning into tunnels, the living part of the town cut into the walls. It felt like somewhere to explore at greater length, but somewhere you would need to explore for a while before it seemed familiar. I recalled getting completely lost in one area of Venice, even though we had a map, even though we followed the street signs, but still not being able to head in the right direction; Jerusalem had that air about it.

But, despite the closeness and consanguinity of the different parts, the different quarters and religions, the impression I took away was of difference, of exclusion. Each religion, or place of worship I suppose, each of them excluded others for grounds sometimes religious, sometimes (it seemed to me) due to blind prejudice. It reminded me that religions are built on the "If your name's not down, you're not coming in" principle; worship as we do to be included or else. I do not see a religion of inclusion, of acceptance of the diversity of humanity. Jerusalem is indeed an exclusive symbol

fading places

2011-05-29T11:43:00.001+02:00

Mostly on business trips, I get to see the inside of a hotel room and the inside of a range of factories. This last week I went to Israel, one of those places that had never been on my "must see" list, and I wasn't really looking forward to it all that much, mostly because of the high temperatures. We arrived as it got dark on Sunday evening, in the speeded up way that dusk falls in countries nearer to the equator, when I am used to the long northern European evenings.

There were five of us travelling together, including one of my best friends, and we managed to have some time to make a couple of evening trips, firstly to Jerusalem (more of which later), and secondly to the Dead Sea. I read this weekend that unless millions of gallons of water are pumped into the sea, it will disappear in the next 50 years. We drove through hilly desert to get to the sea at Neve Zohar, the colours in the desert ranging from double cream to butterscotch, to burnt meringue... (yes, I was hungry as we drove through there)

As we got near, signs at the road's edge indicated how close we were to sea level, and then we dipped below, and still the sea lay far below that. It was striated with barriers, banks, build ups of salt and sand, looking more like the edges of Holland, where the sea is enclosed in order to drain it for land. I'm not sure why the banks are here, I assume they are emerging naturally as a result of the continual evaporation. As we got to the water we could see the salt crusts bulging out of the water, the banking process starting up in miniature. The sun was setting behind the desert hills, and opposite, the "coast" of Jordan was rinsed in an appropriately rosy light.

The salt lines meandered across the water, astonishingly turquoise where there were deeper pools. Dividing and fractal, they fingered they way under the surface, poking through in places and segregating the sea into lakes, pools. The skin of the earth pushing out the natal fluid. Grasses at the edge of the sea turn into crusty coral polyps. The landscape is fading away.

the edge

2011-05-22T06:40:00.001+02:00

Being at the beach should be one of the simple pleasures in life. The best sort of beach has shelving sand dropping steeply into the sea, the waves rush up and tug at your ankles as you try to walk along. Standing still in the swirl of the sand and water results in your feet being buried up to your ankles, deeper each time the surf surges in. The icing on the cake is the rocky outcrops that make the perfect beach, so that the waves crash and send pearled and diamonded droplets into the sky. Spume. And over and over the waves come, in a rhythmn that never gets boring.

The joy of being on the edge, between the elements of earth and water, land and sea is what makes it more complex. I am most at home in the limbo between them, on the beach when the waves crash. Some people are happy at the centre of things, I am an edge person, happier looking in and observing.

The land is a mass where humans live, millions and millions of them, whom I will never know. The humans I meet, talk to, write to, watch on the telly or in films, they belong to this mass. I do not know them, in a Venn diagram of all that we have in common, the two circles barely kiss. I do not feel encompassed by them, I feel a thing apart, I prefer to watch them and carefully pick my interactions.

I feel drawn to the water and its vastness and energy and seeming emptiness (ignoring the scientist part of me that knows the biomass of the oceans is greater than that of the land). I feel drawn to it, I would like to wade into it's depths and swim out away from the shore, I would like to be that bold and adventurous, but I am not. If I stay here long enough, thinking, watching, reflecting, perhaps I will get the strength?

The beach is where land and sea come to interact, where sociability flirts with the empty wet horizon. An edge person needs the land, the mass, as well as the waters that move to their own tides. And so I come to the beach, not such a simple pleasure.

originally inspired by a T10 prompt 3rd June 2010, revised for >language>place blog carnival edition #6 on 21st May 2011 after the world did not end again.

Carnival News (provided the world did not end at 6pm)

2011-05-21T18:44:00.000+02:00

I am looking forward to edition #6 of the blog carnival >language>place, to be hosted by Michelle Elvy over at Glow Worm. Each edition seems to get richer and richer, and it is fascinating to see how each host puts the edition together. And daunting too, there is a lot to live up to for me, as I will be hosting edition #7.

The theme for edition #7 is "unwritten language / unnamed places"

How is spoken language different to the written word? How does an unknown language sound? How do you read the language of the body? How does music dovetail with language? Can pictures speak languages?

How do you remember places? Many of my favourite places are too small for names, so you have to describe them, "You know, the beach that appears at low tide, in that corner between the house and the pier with the stone steps, up the road from the coastguard station..."
Sometimes places become synonymous with language, this place is simply "beach" or "moor" or "city" or "home".
Some places may not have names, or may have too many names.

The edition is planned for end of June, submissions are open from June 1st to June 24th. Click here for details about how to join in the Carnival. You do not have to send themed entries.

shades and shapes

2011-05-20T21:10:00.000+02:00

A couple of weekends ago I went home, home to England, home to my parents house where I spent 15 years of my childhood, home to the English seaside in all its summery glory. It was 25°C in my current hometown, and even warmer in Amsterdam, flying through there. On the beach, although considerably cooler, it was warm enough for walking around in t-shirts; despite the overcast sky it did not rain until the pub lunch was finished and we were on our way back, skirting the industrial zones.

I took a bunch of photos on the beach, kids paddling bare legged under the struts of the pier in seemingly windswept surroundings, grandparents in parkas looking on. I usually avoid taking shots of people in pictures, I must have had some sort of social commentary running through my head as I was framing the pictures, but whatever it was evades me now that it has faded from my short term memory. I took one photo the year before of a young boy running and playing on the pier in a Superman outfit, it seemed that I would be able to do something with that picture, but as yet I have not.

I am drawn instead to the muted pastel shades, and the shapes of the pier and cliffs. To how the sky looks sandy and how the sand looks full of sky. I must have looked at the picture dozens of times before noticing that there were people in it. I think I got rid of them all for the one below ;)

too cute not to post!

2011-05-16T19:59:00.003+02:00

wishful thinking...

2011-05-13T22:50:00.001+02:00

Courtesy of Johnny Depp, apparently...

If you love two people at the same time, choose the second one.
Because if you really loved the first one, then you wouldn't have fallen for the second

too right...

2011-05-11T18:09:00.002+02:00

gone surfing

2011-05-09T20:15:00.000+02:00

Abandoned surfboard

Saltburn-by-the-Sea

May 2011

whisper words of wisdom, let it be

2011-05-01T12:12:00.000+02:00

The day of the wedding the chestnut blossoms were teased loose by the gusty breeze, like paper leaves they covered the ground and drifted, or got caught in grass, branches. Natures confetti. Pretty, even I thought so, spattered across the patio. Something about their insubstantiality. I recalled that someone had once told me that chestnuts were a very primitive tree, and the fallen blossom was simple, an oval ivory-pink leaf with a central vein. It is falling still, a bumper year, sweeping it up today seems like a waste of time as there will only be more tomorrow.

There is a long running dispute between an anonymous neighbour in my block and myself. Every now and then, at Haus meetings (to which, as only a tenant, I am not invited; my landlady goes instead) I will be complained about, or rather, the dreadful state of my patio will be complained about.

I freely admit that I am not the most houseproud of people, but I sometimes do try to make an effort. Every year I get around to emptying the pots of plants that have eventually died off. Admittedly, most of them do die in the heat of August, when I have to go away there is no-one who waters them. I water them intermittently when I get back, hoping they will pull through somehow. And thinking Darwinianly, well if they don't pull through, they weren't fit to survive. But the anonymous neighbour objects to more than this, horror of horrors, sometimes there is grass or dandelions growing in the cracks between my paving slabs, and almost always there is moss. Another very primitive life form if I remember anything about botany. I think that moss is part of a symbiotic relationship with something else (algae?) and goes on to form lichen; about which I was told, very definitely, not to pick it off stone walls because it had been there a damn sight longer than I had been alive.

Moss, trees dropping blossom, autumn leaves and cat hairs swirling in the breeze and scuttling into the corners of the patio and house; to me they are signs of changing seasons, natural, something to be observed not obliterated. I spent some time this morning (between sneezing at the millimetres thick pollen that also coated everything) potting and re-potting plants, and wondering why some people seem so resistant to just letting things be? Blossom and leaves fall, waves wash debris onto the beach, people leave footprints along it. At one five-star hotel/spa I stayed at on the beach in Ko Samui, people were employed to rake the beach to make it smooth again for the tourists. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. It's why I get so annoyed when I see council employees out with leaf-blowers, expending energy to move leaves into neat piles, energy and noise and seemingly oblivious that the next breeze will undo all their 'work' and they will have to repeat it all again tomorrow.

The neighbour at the flat at right angles to mine came out while I was 'gardening', we exchanged greetings but no more. He began his daily clean up of their patio. I swept some of the blossom and earth into piles, and then into a blue IKEA bag to take downstairs to the Biomull bin. I do suspect that he might be the anonymous neighbour, there is him and his wife, but there is also another fussy seeming older man in the block that I have categorised as a busybody. He told me not to park on the street, even though I was unloading a bookcase or some such thing at the time. He would rather I parked in the garage and hauled the furniture across the whole garage and up two flights of stairs than park for 3 minutes outside the flat in nobody's way.

After a couple of minutes, a whirring noise started up, my neighbour was hoovering his patio. I will never hoover a patio. It is not really an outside room, it is the garden, it gets rained upon and the wind pushes and tangles things in the corners. I don't care that things are not neat, I like to see things grow and decay - the shapes of flowers twist and show new things as they die off. I dislike the bareness of my flat when I have tidied up, it happens more often now that I have a cleaner, but this is another task that is still ahead of me today, as due to travelling (mine) and holidays (hers) the flat has not actually been cleaned for 5 weeks.

I wonder why the bareness pricks at me so much? Perhaps I suspect that that is what really reflects my soul, I am difficult to get close to, to know well because inside there is nothing. I surround myself with clutter as a sign that I have lived, look, there is the evidence! Empty wine bottles, books piled on the sofa, the table, laid onto the bookshelves rather than stood on end and put away. Bags dropped onto the chairs, the worktops; shopping bags mostly emptied. I have been out there and interacted with the world, here is the proof. And I wonder if this is qualitatively different to the compulsive neatness, the daily conquering of elements carried out by my neighbour (and many many others, I'm not singling him out except as an example of a type).

The difference to me lies in the displaying element. Perhaps it is as simple as extroversion versus introversion. The extrovert nature wants people to see what he does, wants the things he does to be seen, to be commented upon. The extrovert needs 'society' to approve of him, does not chafe under the rules of a society but enthusiastically adopts them, wants to encourage others to do the same, wants to pull people to join in and do more things that society smiles upon, make more norms to follow and encourage others to follow. At least, that is how it seems to an ingrained introvert... I don't want to impose on the world, I am quite happy sitting and watching what it offers (at least in the way of nature). I dislike arbitrary rules.

Let it be, let me be. I am not a failure only because I don't do the same things that you do, or live to the same standards that you have. Let it be, like I let you be, like I let the world be. Keeping myself to myself is not my judgement on you, but on myself.

I saw the stars move that night

2011-05-01T10:53:00.000+02:00

I sat at the courtyard table in the restaurant,

under the warm night sky

a time capsule of light

glimpsed next to the chimney

and by the time the wine and calvados was drunk

the sky had wheeled a short way.

lazy afternoon... for some

2011-04-30T15:16:00.000+02:00

Little does he know that I am off to the garden centre to find something to put in that pot other than his fluffy backside!

kopfschmerz

2011-04-25T20:24:00.000+02:00

another time, I will be in tune with what other people want...

Quietude

2011-04-25T14:00:00.000+02:00

A small small English town, barely even a village, peaceful in the early morning sunshine. I got off the ferry and drove here, in the opposite direction to all the lorries bursting to offload their produce from the continent. I notice how I think of it as Mainland now, more central to the world than the country I grew up in. Ich bin auf der Insel. Friends excuse me, when I do something 'odd', like not wearing a jacket first thing in the fresh morning when I know I will be inside all day, watching the sunshine warm up the tarmac and concrete around the office, they say, 'Oh she is from the Island,' as if my peripheral position is in itself enough to explain strangeness.

The small English town has a long shingle and sand beach, spiked with dark wooden groynes to prevent the coast from taking a Sunday stroll down to the next village, and from there, maybe even across the Channel to the old enemy, France. This morning though, there are very few people around, it is early, for England, around 7am. I would already have been in the office back home, but here, a couple of joggers, and a couple of sprightly pensioners out for a morning walk are the only people I see. The road along the beach is also mostly undisturbed by cars.

I would not have driven here, even for the beauty of the beach, if I had not been here before as a destination, and if I had not had 10 hours before my next 'appointment'. The beach huts are a couple of miles up the promenade from the faded hotel and guest houses. A couple of miles away from where my great-aunt had lived, and the house where my mother was born. There is a photograph of me here in the swimming pool car park at the age of sixteen, all bleached curls, towering over my brother who at fourteen had yet to put on his growth spurt to reach his six-foot-plus adult height. The huts back on to the swimming pool.

Even so, the town is not really familiar to me, in those days it was a good six hours drive from the parental home, longer if we had the caravan on the back, and after sixteen I begged to be left at home, for what teenage girl wants to spend time cooped up in a caravan with parents and brothers? I remembered that as a young child, we had come here and I had slept in my great-aunts house. I remembered the garden, and the path that led behind a tiny sports club, with corrugated tin fences. It took less than three minutes to get to the beach from her house. She left it though, towards the end of her life, moved to sheltered accommodation around the corner together with her husband, they were in a familiar place even if the rooms were not.

She had cool paper tissue skin, and a particular scent or perfume, I don't know which one it was, perhaps the smell of her face powder, but together it gave her a subtle beauty, a distinctiveness that seemed all her. Quiet and almost elegant, not breathtaking but peaceful, something calming. Whether it was her age or just her I don't really know. The small town has the same qualities, neat but not ostentatious, pretty but not eye-catching. Seeing it in repose, quietude.

For Muriel
more pictures here (scroll down)

Quotations...

2011-04-23T10:10:00.000+02:00

She knew she was able to fly
Because when she came down
She had dust on her hands from the sky
She said I touched a cloud

Ride: Polar Bear

Rathaus windows

2011-04-22T21:00:00.002+02:00

There is a "windows thing" over at YB Poetry, which I have bookmarked and intend to do something about. There have been a couple of pieces of flash on office life, cubicle farms, most notably "Lost at Sea" by Kori Dremow with it's line 'Every now and again you can peer longingly out of a plate of glass to the world outside; you can look but you cannot touch'

This photo, taken on my ramble around my home town today, shows reflections in the windows of the Rathaus, inside the offices this (reversed) must be their view. Hopefully together this will lead to some inspiration for a poem for the YB themed issue. But now, to Photoshop ;)

you would know him if you saw him

2011-04-22T08:50:00.002+02:00

He has been with me for years, this tall man, not a gentleman. His skin is fair, I do like a man who can blush, or be flushed with exertion; thinking of his face unmasked in passion. A large man, well, large bloke. Blokes are down to earth, normal, have blokey mates and do blokey things and he anchors me to the world from which I might otherwise drift. He is big, and strong, he makes me feel physically right, not fragile (I am never that) but in proportion to him and to the world.

He makes me feel like I have a place here, I am not 100% sure what that place is, but it is here because of him. He has the key to opportunities, the one that unlocks my spontaneity. I would think, Hey, lets go to the cliffs today and lie on the grass while the seagulls whirl overhead, or We could go to the station and get on the first westbound train, or The pub is open, lets go. And we would do it, I would not make excuses to myself and end up doing nothing but thinking about new things, I would, we would experience them. That was all that mattered, doing things together.

The details of how he translates to this world, my ideal man, are a little sketchy. There is no recipe, like he must call me xx times a day, or we must be married (to each other!) The last man in this world made me feel all of those things. I felt more interesting, more lovable when he was with me. But the real world came calling and just like that he was gone, and Mr Ideal is taking an extended holiday right now.

note to self...

2011-04-21T20:34:00.002+02:00

drowned forest

2011-04-20T22:02:00.000+02:00

These trees have spent a long time in the water, I know how that feels, but the sun presses on them. Do they dream of budding once more? Reaching down to their murky toes for a spark of life, trying to draw it up inside them, though the capillaries are long since hardened? Oh, hope is not such a straight path.

good weather, good mood

2011-04-19T17:30:00.000+02:00

The sun shines still, and I drove home topless, my hair in my eyes and up my nose with the breeze from the cars movement - it wasn't quite bumper to bumper all the way but there were certainly a lot of people leaving early to make the most of the pleasant evening sun.
I was kicking myself as I drove to work this morning, during March I passed a pylon stub, and pieces of pylon littered on the ground ready for building, and I promised myself I would stop and take some pictures for Parmanu, but I never got around to it, and now the pylon is up and ordinary.
I did make the detour today to see the blasted tree, and can report that it is indeed alive, with caterpillar green leaves perching on top of the horizontal frame like a bad toupee, so it's not a particularly good symbol or metaphor for heartache any longer. I still feel strangely calm, indefinite about that topic at the moment, the temptation is still there, to beg and abase myself if only things could go back (to what, I don't question right now); and I know it grows with the evening. But I am coping, I think.

Quotations...

2011-04-17T13:32:00.001+02:00

"That's why I love the spring: It takes the edge off that feeling of weary helplessness"
Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

Carnival reflections

2011-04-16T13:22:00.001+02:00

What does the >language>place carnival mean to me? I think Michael Solender put it most succinctly when he described it as being about "belonging and connections". It is about linking up with people around the world who have at heart a love of language, and an expression of my admiration for people writing, living in a language not their own. I recognise that although I do not live in my native country, I am far from being fluent in Germany, my adopted country, in either language or culture. Sometimes language is all about barriers, and sometimes I am looking for barriers; this carnival helps me realise that I don't need to build them, that I can connect with people who have similar experiences.

Michelle Elvy is hosting edition #06 over at Glow Worm, with the theme "language and place on the edge" - I am hoping to have something to submit to her shortly - I have a piece in mind but need to check it out first ;)

I've returned from a three week trip to the USA, which has been virtually writing free, and felt the need to be creative again, so I put together a new page here in practice makes perfect to keep track of all the editions, before noticing that Dorothee has done the same thing! (here). Lets hope this kicks off some actual writing!

Be careful what you wish for

2011-03-31T23:31:00.003+02:00

This is the technicolour tourist version of my street, on one of the handful of days when the sky is blue and dry and the wind moves only as fast as a cat brushing past my ankles.

Not like the days when the wind from the moors darts its way to the sea through many fingered lanes, and turns the planes of my face to cold metal edges. It does not speak of the weariness inside my elbows from carrying too many shopping bags at once, to save having to make a second, a third trip back to the top of the hill where a car can be parked. In the winter storms, we can be cut off for days on end, safe from the lashing waves behind our thick stone walls, but the windows rattle and I pile old blankets against them, mostly in vain as the drafts will always send their tendrils through to find me.

Not to mention the icy days, the foggy icy days when to step out is always to risk being whisked to down to the sea wall, bumping over the cobbles.

I first saw this place on a balmy blue day, and had no understanding of its changeable nature in the face of the weather. The streets were full of tourists milling around, looking in windows where people lived. I felt the intrusion and I longed to be here when they were not, to feel the rhythms of a normal life, to call out to the other residents and exchange snippets of gossip, opaque to the visitors. To be a regular in the tiny pub, with its copper surfaced bar, and have the gruff but good natured bearded barman ask if I wanted the usual.

I am part of the tourist trade now, I searched to find a way to be more involved in this place, and I put my name down for a cottage. The interview went fine, although I was asked to stop dying my hair, as they felt a grey haired lady would be more authentic. I signed a contract for two years to live as a local, and I look at this damn picture every day, every day and count the number of days that are really like the tourist dream. Not quite on one hand. And I count down the days until I can leave

blasted

2011-03-24T19:38:00.001+01:00

blasted but beautiful still

in its way, most days

I drive right by

but I stopped this morning,

I wanted to see

if it still lived

with its heart splintered so

MuDJoB

2011-03-23T18:14:00.000+01:00

features me today ;) a tale inspired by the recent 10th anniversary of the foot and mouth outbreak. It is fitting that it goes up today as I am thinking of pyres, and from there to Pyrrhic victories, and wondering if there is also such a thing as a Pyrrhic defeat...

http://mudjob.blogspot.com/2011/03/guest-writer-jk-davies.html

from: sunday speculation

2011-03-20T17:13:00.001+01:00

Someone in the block is cooking onions, my kitchen door is open to the still-cold air, my back garden is a shaded patio from October to March. It starts getting sunlight in the evening around this time of year, but it is only for a few minutes, highlighting the deep moss that has taken the place of the grassy area. Strange Evil, a book I read when a teenager, it featured the smell of onions which, although nice at first, grew stronger and stronger until nothing else could be smelt at all, and the god/devil figure of a giant baby appeared. That memory just popped into my brain then, yet there are countless other times I don't think of that when I smell onions, as recently as yesterday when I fried some to put in the gravy, to have with my illegal imported British sausages. My feet are cold, I am wearing sandals in lieu of slippers, not because all the socks are in the wash, and still there is no word from him. Time to go bake some cakes.

Frühling

2011-03-19T22:36:00.000+01:00

Today, spring has appeared with it's usual "well I was here days ago you must have blinked and missed me" vibe. Full blown blossoms in the street in town, next to Beata Uhse, fittingly already indecently pink.

There were lambs in the scrubby field next to where I work, already beyond the cute leggy stage, and the hairy drifts of the silver birch branches swayed with the breeze and the sun shone where today rain was predicted.

This year, both slower and faster than ever, as the spring begins a third of the year is past, and only a handful of weeks until a large looming birthday for me, and this year I am acutely aware of aging.

He said, intending to be nice, commenting on an internet picture I'd sent, that my tits weren't as saggy as that, and I thought maybe not the last time you saw them, but it has been a while. I was excited, instead, by kitchen equipment, a new pair of scales and the promise of home baking where I have never wanted to play the home maker with him.

Age is creeping up on me, even my eyelids droop and fold, I am so practised at veiling my gaze.

light curtain

2011-03-07T11:52:00.002+01:00

Thinking Ten

2011-03-06T11:53:00.000+01:00

Inspiration or Perspiration struck ;) I actually wrote something to a prompt this morning!

http://www.thinkingten.com/profiles/blogs/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-1?xg_source=activity

I'm gonna rain on your parade

2011-03-03T14:49:00.002+01:00

I saw Frankenstein waiting at the bus stop this morning. Her hair was pulled back tight against her skull, and she had a perfect lipsticked rosebud pout, and a beige overcoat, but the extra lines on her forehead looked like a deep frown. In my office I have three colleagues, a red & white clown, a parking disc and a banana. In my grey top and black trousers, I say, grinch-like, that I have come as a stormcloud, that I will rain on their parade.

I can't really pinpoint why I feel uneasy about Karneval, partly it is the dressing up which always seems childish verging on sinister; there is no tradition of this in my past, the only time costumes were allowed was for Halloween, and once you'd gone to big school, even that was out. I read in books of masked balls, revels, Carnevales, all colourful backdrops for darker deeds.

The attraction I suppose is that it is a time out of time, where things that are done are out of character, and not mentioned in the cold light of day. In a costume, less recognisable if not actually disguised, you can be someone else. There is not exactly a conspiracy of silence, more a recognition of 'but for the grace of god' that observed indiscretions could have been your own, and keeping quiet is the norm.

I think it is the organised nature of the fun that makes me itch. The Karneval season 'kicks off' on the 11th of November, and the next three months are spent planning parades, with several practice parades as Rosenmontag draws ever nearer. That's right, they spend three months practising to walk through the town. They have bands playing, and floats from which sweets, badges etc are thrown, but a parade is basically a bunch of people, some dressed up, standing at the side of the road to watch another bunch of people who are definitely dressed up go past. There is a whole subset of songs, all rousing and earnest and 'fun!' and almost all indistinguishable from each other, all to be yelled along with while swaying from side to side. The Kölsch flows, a gassy lager beer, lubricating the whole occasion, hardly transmuted when expelled as urine. The expectation that you will have fun is high, admitting that I don't particularly want to join in is puzzling evidence that foreigners are different. I drive home, and the roads around my house are filled with people milling, and some plainly staggering, there are six Rotes Kreuze vans in my street alone to cope with the alcohol related injuries as the day wears on.

I sound like a puritan, unable to bear other people enjoying themselves, but I think for me the key niggle is that it lacks spontaneity. These five days are when you are sanctioned to go have fun, to drink to excess, to wear outlandish costumes. When they are finished you have to wait seven or eight months, then you can start planning to do it all over again.

At the bus stop on the way home, a pirate and an airline pilot, both checking text messages.

updates... roundups... letdowns...

2011-02-20T19:37:00.000+01:00

I am just about keeping my head above water with write1sub1 - see the stats below ;)
In the last couple of weeks, although I have been writing less, I have had a couple of pieces accepted for later publication - look out for 'Foot and Mouth' in MuDJoB mid/late March, and 'liminal' in the May edition of negative suck. Also, my poem 'the river tonight' was chosen as an editors pick at thepoetrycircle ;)

I am annoyed with myself that I could not get my head in the right place to meet a couple of deadlines - notably the >language>place carnival edition #4 to be hosted by Jean Morris at tasting rhubarb. Also, I wanted to do something collaborative for Dorothee Lang's synergetic transformations at BluePrint Review, I just never got to the right mindstate.

oh well, onwards and upwards...

sang the starting maelstrom II

2011-02-20T11:56:00.001+01:00

She rested her elbows and breasts on the dull grey railings of the road bridge and cars swished their tyres through the damp tarmac, raising droplets as they passed. The river in spate below her, rushing swirling and tumbling over itself within its familiar boundaries, and clawing at the wet land it had covered away from its banks. Her hair hung down, narrowing the boundaries of her face as she concentrated on the dizzy water with her grey eyes.

She tried to concentrate her thoughts, but it was like the flood had swept up her mind in its mindless rising, I should not let this break me, was whisked downstream, and all the thought that was left was eddying, whirling. Now he is beyond my reach, sang the starting maelstrom. She let the bag fall from her shoulder, heard the buttons of her coat scrape against the metal separating her from the unslaked water, and discarded that too, stepping out.

convalescence (ekphrasis)

2011-02-12T21:35:00.001+01:00

The beautiful smoothness
of sunlight on black sand
recedes in the whirl of
overhead institutional strip lights
which fail to banish
the smoke filled
mud sodden beach
with its flowers of sound that
I did not die upon.
No ending, no turning to smoke
& since I cannot dissipate and
escape as a fug under the door I
slide a hand under my blanket
to comfort myself.

A poetry challenge at poetrycircle

last aros

2011-01-31T20:22:00.000+01:00

coiled under the bed
a new animal,
furred grey
ropes of dust

in my head

2011-01-27T22:20:00.000+01:00

conversations with you
though the echo
of my high heeled footsteps
bounces through the empty
market square

oops..

2011-01-27T06:10:00.000+01:00

missed a stone yesterday
will miss it again today, no doubt
sleep work eat sleep

blink|ink #5

2011-01-25T18:33:00.000+01:00

More celebrations are due! After the >language >place carnival rolled into town, the new blink|ink (edition #5) hits town, and I have a poem "v-word" featured!

OK, good things come in threes, so I'm kind of waiting for the third one now, except I don't believe myself to be a superstitious person. Waiting is something both familiar and repulsive to me, I somehow feel I should make things happen, not wait, passively, for things to happen to me. I don't believe in things that I can't touch; often I don't believe in the things I can touch, everything is mutable. But most of life seems to be waiting, for all the carpe diem hullaballoo, I for one am still mostly comfortable with the 9-5 (OK, 7:30-18:00) life, as long as I get a bit of creativity time to keep me going.

Look at me, look at my reality check... my celebratory news turned, by my fear of heightened expectations into a sobering downbeat grumble. Oh well, I blame PMT...

It's here!

2011-01-25T06:19:00.002+01:00

organised cous cous

2011-01-24T12:00:00.001+01:00

water & grains
& herbs & spices
slurried in the bowl;
in the pan, sizzling
chicken & peppers
ready
for eating
at my desk
tomorrow

Countdown >language >place

2011-01-24T06:21:00.000+01:00

Edition #3 is due out on 25th January

This round is hosted by Michael Solender at not from here, are you?

This one has a theme, "A place I felt I really belonged" and my piece, "where I live/where I love" has been chosen for inclusion. This piece inspired a number of other authors over at the 6S social network, check them out here

sang the starting maelstrom

2011-01-23T10:56:00.001+01:00

circle splish swirl

whirl splash

circle swish

bubbles pop up

cycle swirl

circle

begins again

Still somewhat (I know, this enthusiasm will be the death of me) inspired by the flood pictures I took last weekend, this picture took me a while to get "right" but the flash fiction it prompted seemed to flow and now it's submitted so I can tick off the sub part of Write1Sub1 too for the week - anything more will be a bonus!

You are my world

2011-01-22T17:04:00.000+01:00

Again, I muse on music.

My brother sniffily remarked, perusing my CD haul after a shopping trip to the sales, "They do make new music, you know." I don't know how or why, but those aural memories of teenage heard songs never disappear. Sure, they fade, but it only takes hearing the song again to remember, to sing along, even to sing 'your' thread in all the complex harmonies. The world (between my house and the large Hit in Sankt Augustin) does not know how lucky it is that the day was full of tired grey snow, or my car window would have been open; and passers by would be treated to me shrilling along to Jimmy Somerville's falsetto, and the harmonising lower notes...

go on, have a go...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-hPUII3SE8&feature=related

more tired

2011-01-21T18:45:00.000+01:00

please
do not reject me
(yes of course
I mean
my poetry)
when I
have PMT

no saag today

2011-01-20T18:13:00.001+01:00

Thinking of the senses, and haven't covered smell in the aros stuff so far, I hadn't really observed anything particularly related to smell, living in the winter, in flat, car, office block is a generally deodorized environment. And today's stone is about the absence of smell too, a friend was sending me a curry via a colleague travelling back from the UK. It was 27th of December when I last had one, at the curry house on the suburban estate I grew up on.

The courier arrived late today,
anticipation high, I could almost smell the saag aloo
shish kebabs too
but he had forgotten, left them in his fridge.
He left the office decorated in post-its
saying "Curry"
I will imagine the aroma and
the taste and the yellow
sticking to my fingers.

tired

2011-01-19T18:17:00.000+01:00

eyes curling like old sandwiches
persuasive abilities absent
temper not lost but misplaced
the desk left behind hastily
for the cotton caress of bed

Fluff

2011-01-18T17:32:00.002+01:00

I have been trying for the past few days to describe the feeling of stroking Seville's stomach, the warm fluffy furry hair, the lightness of its texture and its pristine whiteness, a bit like hot candy-floss but without the stickiness. I tickle the top of his head and mess up his ginger tabby stripes before smoothing them. He walks across me, his paws heavy and he still has not learnt to retract his claws on uneven surfaces (me).
And still the perfect description or metaphor eludes me, and I am stuck with "Fluff"

PC personalities

2011-01-17T18:15:00.001+01:00

My laptop, at home, gateway to pleasing alternate realities and potentially to peer plaudits, to family and far-flung friends disappoints me infrequently.
It isn't the fault of my work pc, but it houses some personalities that actively irritate me, that little orange git still knows no better than to e-mail me with his ridiculous self justifications. If only, if only a hat-pin would work, but I know his skin is so thick that there is no room in his body for bones, organs.

electric trees

2011-01-16T12:39:00.001+01:00

Stark and grey

capillary systems poke into

the pewter smudged sky

ducks and rabbits

2011-01-15T20:19:00.001+01:00

it is nice

weather for ducks

but the rabbits

are flooded out of their

bijou riviera homes

and pile their pellets

now

above the high water mark

more pictures here

Proof! I did get off my arse this morning and go for a walk with a camera, to see the broken river. Expanses of shiny beige water with silhouetted trees and a splotched sky made for some beautiful "mood" pictures, some good material for photoshop, for later. Nearly home again, there is a small canal? river? stream? I don't know quite what to call it, it is a couple of metres across and fast flowing through the town, but mostly banked in concrete, except for the small muddy island near the millwheel. The water flows fast around one side of the island, but the ducks like to hang out on the quieter side, where they create the ripples, pushing their oiled breasts through the water.

subtle changes

2011-01-14T20:41:00.000+01:00

It is Friday night and I am looking forward, at least, I am thinking about what I have to do tomorrow, I can't say that I am looking forward in the sense that I really, really want to go to the hairdresser.

I want to get up and the sun to be glimpsed behind dramatic clouds, and walk in the other direction to the river and see what it looks like in the daylight. I want to feel that I have done something different to the normal routine. At the hairdresser I will be required to make decisions, and I am not in the mood for that, so I will end up with something similar to last time. Variations on a theme. Subtle changes.

Superfluidity

2011-01-13T19:03:00.000+01:00

Non stop, sometimes fine rain, heavier than drizzle, sometimes hurtling down like sweets bursting from a bag; but always dark, grey and sapping. The river, which had receded, settled down back into the confines of its banks, is unrecognisable now, as the fields have disappeared underneath it. It makes me feel lifeless, despite having had a mostly stimulating day at work, when I step out to come home, the energy dissipates.
Luckily, I made some notes on getting to my desk about the drive in this morning, and isn't it stupid how it is the only time I feel I have wholly to myself in which to think, and yet I live alone. The computer doesn't demand I browse blogs, play games. My cat is just as happy curled up whether I am there or not, I am (almost) superfluous at times to him. And thinking of this word cycles me back to the superfluidity (ob dass ein Wort ist, hab' ich keine Ahnung) of the wet world outside. So, without any further meandering, here is today's stone...

Silver birches, trunks like wet newspaper rise out of the gloom at the roadside.
They guide, they delineate the morning commute.

stepping in to the river

2011-01-12T18:27:00.001+01:00

Bruce Springsteen sings "We go down to the river, and into the river we dive" on my drive home from work. When I get home I step into the river of stones and feel my toes get warm here, or cold there, and my other senses are tweaked as I read the words of strangers and I sit on the teak bench and feel its pressure against my capacious flesh and my shoulders drop as I stare at the screen and my lower back starts to ache. The river tugs at me, but I just wrote a poem about abjectivity that has been buzzing in my head for a couple of days instead.
I want to dive into the river but today I forgot my swimming costume and my mind is still sloshing abjectness around and I cannot skinny dip today. But I will keep standing here on the bank and maybe tomorrow I will have a perfectly observed stone.

Scars

2011-01-11T18:00:00.001+01:00

eyes flashing in the mirror, overhead halogen.
scars, skin not shining but reflective.
as scars should be.

the hare & the tortoise

2011-01-10T20:54:00.000+01:00

Driving to work today, late after mistakenly not setting the alarm, the route with its 17 sets of traffic lights was conspiring against me. After the first roundabout I passed a cyclist in dark clothing, no reflective clothing to mark him out. A small rectangular rucksack on his back like a stunted attempt at a snail shell. At each set of lights I passed him again, thinking, this time, this time I will get away from him, and each time the next set of lights changed to red as I approached, and stayed that way until he caught up again, the white dynamo light appearing in the side mirror, misted with road grime. He shot past me at my turn off junction and rode on into the morning.

yup; a round-up

2011-01-09T19:53:00.000+01:00

Well, at the end of the first week of January, I have managed to hit the Write1Sub1 target... I may be cheating slightly, as I am not writing exclusively "short stories", but a mix of observational pieces (for A River of Stones), poems and short prose pieces.

I did in fact start a short story this week and am still struggling with where the hell it's going to go, let alone finding the right voice to tell it in. Oh well, fingers crossed (although this does make it difficult to type) and hopefully I will have a polishable nugget when I get to the end of getting the ideas down in pretty little pixels.

just in... had a couple of my submitted pieces rejected... oh well... facebook games beckon ;)

tasting

2011-01-09T15:33:00.000+01:00

Thick and sticky, salty for sure, a roasted taste, and the weird peppery flavour of celery somewhere in there. I love my new jar of Marmite!

I did not think I would...

2011-01-08T17:14:00.000+01:00

but I miss the snow... and the extra light it splashed around, brightness where the dulled earth squats now.

on observance.

2011-01-07T18:20:00.001+01:00

The river finally burst it's banks today. It has been threatening for a couple of weeks, the black water (it is almost always night time when I cross the bridge) flirting with the snow, but with the last two days of rain, it finally happened when the ground had lost it's pale shroud. Palely glimmering puddles had spilled onto the adjoining fields, their shade missed matching that of the metallic navy car in front of me by the thickness of a page.

I checked all these things because of my inability to observe & regurgitate in today's corporate workshop. Perhaps because I had to digest information aurally, or whether the consultant/trainer's Texas drawl and lack of cultural awareness set me off, I was scratchy and irritated most of the afternoon. Hey, at least I wasn't nodding off! I picked fault with the statements she made and whispered under my breath to colleagues when she was talking, so I guess she was equally as resentful of my presence as I was, and it was no surprise that she picked me for the final role play of the day. I dazzled the room with my consummate performance of a concerned manager.

Hoping to avoid yet more beautiful visual descriptions for today's small stone, all I can come up with is:-

Arrogant,
chrysalis skin splits
not a mocking butterfly
but a consummate
actress emerges.

Muffled

2011-01-06T18:11:00.001+01:00

I have a cold, not a bad one, but it's shrouded my hearing. I didn't turn the volume dial up on the way home, it was not silent but the radio talked at itself. The engine mumbled, and I tried to imagine hearing the rain falling on my windscreen, but even the occasional squeak of the wipers was muffled today. It makes me feel very distant, cut off. Being wrapped in cotton wool is always supposed to be comforting but I feel slightly panicked, as if the sounds will never come back, I will remain forever marginal, liminal. A figure in a parallel mist world.

revolution

2011-01-05T06:39:00.000+01:00

We spin at

over 1,000

miles per

hour.

Sliding the

sunset

away

getting back into the routine...

2011-01-04T19:07:00.002+01:00

Fluid turquoise, buoyant. Autonomic strokes, followed by chlorine scented skin and clean fingernails.

new poem at amphibi.us

2011-01-03T17:59:00.000+01:00

http://amphibi.us/all/too-much/

please check it out ;)

Scrumpled

2011-01-03T06:14:00.000+01:00

Scrunched, crumpled resolutions. If you can call it a resolution, to vaguely think "yes, I should do less of that in the new year," but it is only a date, and I would not be me without procrastination...

Hoek

2011-01-02T12:46:00.002+01:00

Here at the edge, waiting for the ship, looking out across the baleful night. The lights of the industrial complex on the other side are white and orange, but only the orange ones are picked up by the overcast sky, glowering intensely. And the water, half river, half sea, the water performs a strange trick with the light, it steals and swallows all the bright yellow tones of the sky, and reflects back a blood orange red.

The water moves constantly, rolling and roiling, a twitching throat, and the red painted barriers in front of me are contrasted sharply against the white snow covered quay, it is not an auspicious start to a journey. The wind whips up the petrochemical flare and the whole sky flickers. I shiver, and hope that the homecoming will be warmer than this.

New Year, new hangover

2011-01-01T13:54:00.000+01:00

The fireworks crackled, like someone was eating cornflakes in my mouth without permission.
But today I am on my knees, on the floor in the bathroom, and celebration seems a very distant memory.

Is there really a tugging at the heartstrings?

2010-12-28T22:25:00.001+01:00

yes you were a crutch
peeved at your removal, but
I can walk on ice

winter tyres

2010-12-22T12:07:00.004+01:00

snow fields exhale fog
higher than zero, new tyres
swish wet black tarmac

I am turning into my mother...

2010-12-20T05:00:00.000+01:00

Now, this is not to say that I think this is a bad thing, but today I made some "out of date" cake.

Last weekend I meant to cook some date & walnut loaf, but was stymied by opening a pack of Biskin Gold to find out that it was, in fact, white. And basically lard. Apparently, what I need is the Biskin Blue which is yellow.

So this weekend, I was feeling smug that I'd remembered yesterday to buy some butter from Kaiser's, although they didn't have the Biskin Blue I picked up real butter instead. I was in the middle of my "I belong here" wander through town, shopping for food, knick knacks and looking at the obvious tourists come to visit the market.

However, when I opened the packet this lunchtime, it was to find that I had bought Sauerrahmbutter, basically a butter made from sour cream. And called me sensitive, but I could smell that it was different to "normal" butter or cooking margarine. "Eben so," I decided to go ahead and make the cake - the worst that could happen is that it would taste awful and I would put it out in the garden to feed the birds, or in the bin or something.

I opened the cooking ingredients cupboard to find three packs of walnuts, the sell by date on the opened packet was December, so no problem there, it's not the end of the month yet. The unopened packet of dates said they should have been eaten by mid November, but it's dried fruit right? A preserve? Should be OK. The eggs and milk had been hanging around a couple of days but that wasn't a problem. I thought to disguise the potential sour milk taste of the butter with a sachet of vanilla sugar and some mixed spice. I hate to think how old the spice is, but it moved here with me and it probably wasn't fresh when the removal van was packed.

So as I put the cake in the oven I thought "I am turning into my mother"; her experimental approach to cooking ingredients is a family joke, the story of Cheese and Peach loaf will get us all smirking in no time. I know that turning out like her is nothing I should worry about, being quirky and original and experimental are all aspects of who she is and aspects I am happy to have picked up from the genetic shuffle and the longer experiment called "bringing up a child".

Also, the loaf actually turned out rather nice...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MUM

xxx

2x Glühwein recipes

2010-12-19T09:58:00.000+01:00

Recipe n° 1:
Place 1l red wine, 0.5l orange juice, 0.25l rum or cointreau into the slow cooker. Add 75g demerara sugar and stir until dissolved. Add cinnamon stick and grated nutmeg. Stick 12 cloves into a small orange and add. Turn slow cooker to auto and heat for approximately 2 hours, allowing the flavours to infuse. Serve in heat proof glasses or beakers.

Recipe n° 2:
Place person into shower, shampoo and condition hair, wash body, drying time approximately 30 minutes (to include cleaning of ears, rubbing and combing hair, inserting contact lenses, moisturising dry skin on legs, looking in the mirror and wondering.) Dither for 90 minutes, including drinking coffee, playing at the computer, wondering what clothes to put on. Dress person (5 minutes after dithering is complete). Chefs note: extra dithering for outer layers of clothing may be required. Add purse, gloves, scarf and leave house for Weihnachtsmarkt and walk to nearest Glühwein vendor (approximately 4 minutes.) Serve in convivial surroundings.