Observations #4

I want to give some proper time to the blog and maybe some writing but the days are so hot that I am reduced to that of a Vogue reader (Martha Rosler antidote here).

I have been feeling recently that there is a kind of illogical aesthetic to Chania though the ubiquity of being here day in day out prevents me from satisfactorily grasping and articulating it. These two photos are rough attempts to record some of it and I hope I have a chance to take some more. Then maybe more ideas can come from a later meditation.

Some Quickies...

...I'm on fire!

Sunset this evening:

Observations #3

Observations #2

I'm getting tardy I know, but there are reasons.
Some observations recently in words:

So many birds in cages, birds singing gloriously, nailed to a crumbling wall, above the ancient woman who keeps them there.
Birds in cages outside the petshop. Chorus of competing singing and chirping to the accompaniment of terrifying Greek traffic on a tuesday morning. Birds calling to be noticed in cages.

A lone cockroach outside the supermarket. Retreating from the pavement as we pass. Returns to its position when we are gone.

A basketball court at night with the stars just visible despite the floodlight. Tall metal arms holding the hoops and their shadows falling over the court, one arm's shadow intersecting with an oilstain, interconnected, a centipede makes a quick scuttle across both and into the dark on the other side.

A rusty drain pipe protruding from the middle of a balcony four floors above us. Showering the street with soapy water. At midnight there were rivers of the stuff making inky landscapes all over our walk home.

A fish with a tail of fine silk billowing out behind it, locked in a never ending forward motion in a glass bowl. Glassy eyes that don't register me.

Market Day

Everything is a sensual feast at the moment and with it comes the urge to preserve or possess it all. I think that might need investigating - possession - a sign of the times or inheritance..? In my small way I wonder if my wish to hold on is because the date of my departure from Greece is looming ever closer.

Today C and I went to the λαϊκή ('leiki' - street market) and gawped at the amazing array of fresh produce. We talked of bringing our cameras next week to mark my final visit and try and save something of the visual experience. It was the fish that caught my eyes the most. Plump, compact, tiny bodies seemingly pushing out at their taught skin; the silver and yellow and black and blue shimmering; the shape of many of them slippery on top of each other; the death that their prettiness distracts me from until wide open jelly eyes stare me right in the face. Pools of bloody water collecting in plastic buckets under the table.

In the heat all smells are pungent, lettuces reek, parsley - fennel - celery emanate, peaches and nectarines drift down the busy corridor of humans pushing past each other, trolleys over sandled feet and body odor as normal as toothy grins and rough hands throwing bags of produce from the scales to the customer. I can let most of the noises ride past me as I don't understand much of the Greek.

There was an enormous woman in a bright red dress. Her flesh was visible underneath the thin layer, rolling, and she had no apology for it. I smile, this red is dazzling and suits the market. Mushrooms, peppers haphazardly splayed over everything, live rabbits to coo over, thyme, olives in vats, sweaty feta cheese, tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes, cucumber, cherries, potatoes, errant snails moving in their boxes. When we cleared the stalls the heat was unbearable.

Blandness Transformed

Well, there are different ways of feeling down. I have been struggling a bit lately overcoming a stress-induced dead effect, being weighed down and with it not feeling inspiration or confidence about sharing. See-saw see-saw see-saw....

This photo I think is technically poor, but what I wanted to get at was the texture and blandness-transformed-into-something...



...and a sneaky pigeon...

And More Pigeons

Yes I may be pushing up against the line between absurdity and boredom, but I am still very much in love with pigeons. It could be a little harmless anthropomorphism, it could be an attraction to their purely instinctual being. They seem to embody 'flow'. In groups their spacial awareness causes them to make evenly balanced patterns best seen from above.

And finding the odd squashed one on the road still affects me.

Falling Light Photo Essay

One Hit Wanders

On to one photo posts at the mo, though I think the last couple of shots are strong enough to withstand it ;)

Woke with strange dreams of filming slugs and fishes in rising cave water this morning.

Untitled #1

Some Light Shaping

Summer Afternoon

Observations

Like I've said before, there are so many reasons to write or to throw something out into the world. Today my ventures are like the lone survivor clinging to a piece of his broken ship, his desperate grasp at life before being dashed against the rocks in one of Poseidon's best storms. A little dramatic, but then maybe that's part of feeling melancholic - the dramatic, the performance, the identity in it.

More Pigeons

Good Morning Pigeons

Up To Date

Been a little distracted by life, summer, friends, Twitter, the bar. Here's some pics:

More Fishes

Fishes from the harbour today. Water a little murky. Tunes just perfect.

Like A Flash

On our walk home last night we sang the Beatles' Across the Universe and talked about God and the godlessness of modernity. Somehow the Twentieth Century appears to me now like a flash of brutal ideologies and the very force of it and the drive towards secularisation is exhausting.

Sweet thoughts and feelings about beauty and God and higher feelings.

Scar Tissue

The most emotive line of all: a scar.

Platelets and other tiny bits of the repair machine
spin a web so fine as to leave a silver line,
cleaved and shimmery to catch my eye.

Eleni's Dog

I passed Eleni's dog today - the stray she loves - as I was walking to the street with the minaret. It was foraging in a half moon of turf land that accidentally carries sounds like an amphitheatre and always needs its grass cut. The dog looked busy enough, with its small head perched on a big barrel body and a kind of permanent grin on its face; familiar looking wiry biscuit-coloured fur; short legs to trot around the harbour with, unkempt nails tapping on the paving. A mutt's life, that black gummy grin still hanging in the air after the dog has gone. Tourists stood nearby taking photographs of the decrepit houses crumbling above us under the sun.

I looked at the dog and remembered how Eleni had been telling me one evening about it. We were sitting on the harbour with our backs to the people and watching night creep up at us from the sea, watching as the world beneath the water's surface disappeared and the waves transformed themselves into brooding slow-moving beasts, blackening. Eleni told me about how the dog would come and sit beside her to share the view and she made the sound of the dog's sigh. And with a jolt, just like that, the two were one!