Muted

Beachy Birds

Just went for a walk along the seafront in Penzance, Cornwall. Saw many Pied Wagtails for the first time,

as well as the Rock Pipit  

and the Turnstone.

All very exciting for me as these birds don't visit London.

Treen

Just arrived back in London after a week camping in Cornwall. Still glowing with the wonder of it. A glimpse:

Canal Beasts

Work Lines Worth Isolating

Molten light thick on a
tarnished floor, flows.

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.

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.

More Pigeons

Good Morning Pigeons

Thought Themes To Build On (1)

Current topics of interest:

crystalise - a moment in time, of time, a realising, the birth of a structure
revelation as disclosure, uncovering
phenomenological description vs writerly imagination
mothering, mothership, as a state and concept
facing the world with our viewfinders already configured to see according to the structures we already know
destroying structures, destroying worldviews, in order to see reality again

the experience of being absolutely structureless and out in the world
despair

rebuilding

A Treat

Some Van Gogh for us as I tired myself out reading Introduction to Phenomenology well into the night. Really enjoyed Gadamer's optimism and Arendt might be a new hero of mine... (what a photo on that link!).

Thought we could have something a bit porky in light of the current pandemic.

Spent much of last night trying to bend my already-sleeping-brain round the problem of making a viable table for Blogger. I had in mind that the previous post would be nicely ordered and allow me to contribute over time, the entrees lining up in their little boxes, the frame jumping to accomodate my new ideas. Fried myself.

I don't know if I like these pictures yet, though I recognise this line as the edge of a difference mirror.

I have company up here

(found it, here are some snippets)
The Dividing Line, 2007

When I think of a line on a page, or canvas, I imagine a miniature version of myself struggling to take hold of the line with my hands. It becomes a rope, or unwieldy tentacle, of which I must wrestle off of its grounding surface. I seize it with effort and tear it from the page, pulling it up as we would rip off embedded wires, the paint encrusted nails pinging dramatically and flying off to scatter into dark corners. In my hands it is rounded and slippery with a certain life force of its own. It flexes on its own accord and takes all my might to keep it under control.

Once I have released it from the surface it becomes a journey for me to undertake. I travel the length of the cord with my hands doing the walking. The line moves between my hands like a tug of war team might hope for, the slack - the distance travelled - discarded behind, fallen and forgotten, tamed but coiled, twitching. I pull, and is it me that moves forward or the line that pushes towards me? I don’t know. There are feet, but perhaps in this imagined world they are many and don’t only stand on a base but push out in all directions to define the whole sphere of spatial extent. The journey travelled, always seen linear – A to B. This terrible three dimensional snake whips up around me carving its way through a thought space, a nowhere place.
...

Sometimes I am allowed to come back down to earth and two feet plant themselves, imaginatively, on a bank on the side of a ravine. This line has morphed into a chasm of depth, with a bottomless view, for me to look fearfully over. I am so small, and it has roared open, a hairline crack grown catastrophic. The wind blows and threatens to take me over the edge. This line is no less scary, but I am no longer wielding it; I now grip the turf and feel condors soar over currents, their beady eyes watching me on my level, indifferent to the fathoms below.

...


It should go next to one of my drawings really.