Moorhen Blues

The sound of a moorhen crying from the other side of the river during my run this morning was a jolt. It was the sound of an animal communicating in a language I will never understand. It was a very lonely feeling.

I also saw a giant fish leap out of the water.

Untitled #2

Grumpy today.
Though doing this is cheering me up just when I was looking forward to really wallowing in it.

Aggregation

These two images strike me in ways different to the more landscapey shots I've already posted. Still from Bodmin, still marked by my sense of 'homecoming' obscured by the newness of everything, these shots hone in on things strewn about the place, found at the back of a garage etc. When lining up the camera's viewfinder with what my brain wants to see as a composed image, I am guided by a certainty within myself on how to order the image, a logic. Categorically I wanted to avoid photographing one thing, isolated, and instead show what happens within the frame as a conglomerate of parts to make the whole, consciously disrupting the normal edges of a thing in able to show it as aggregated within a new - or just my own - frame of meaning.

Art-speak flowing then today. Sweet.

Sky as Opening

Tunnel Vision

Mizzle

The pathways diverge when you look at plants, the line of stem parting to go two ways, maybe more, eventually to flower, itself an expression of future and forward motion. Skin unfurls and green shoots push and at the end something pretty blooms for a time.

Over the top of the hill wind splutters with the 'mizzle' from across the moorland. The sound enters the house through drafty gaps in the window. Looking out at the grey sky, green land, the sound joins the pool of aural memory and ceases to speak of this moment, instead being a reverberation of childhood spent in drafty houses and long looks out at the land beyond.

Small knarly trees in sillouette hold out against the grey sky, warped, wrapped in the wind. Young trees that look old in this ancient landscape. Flattened shapes of grey hedgerows receeding back into the mist.

Bodmin Started

Contact

Hi! I don't know how long it's been since I posted but I know I've been out of it, feeling the lack of commitment to something that I make.

I just scanned the humongous list of blogs that I follow and haven't had a chance to look at (I have no internet at home at the moment) and had a pang for everything I'm missing. The internet keeps me connected and in conversation with art, imagery, words, news, culture, ideas, lives, people...

I returned from a trip to Bodmin (Cornwall, UK) over the weekend and will post some of the photos from what was a really beautiful trip.

Bluerp!

If I could make a textual equivalent of that noise that happens when a stylus rips across an LP to mark a change, then I would. I have moved countries and am aware that everything in this blog so far has been a response to my being in Crete. I don't know yet how to make the change. I don't know yet if I will attempt to continue the previous practices in London (a shift in subject but continuation of viewing framework) or if London will demand different working practices. Until I settle down I won't know the outcome and things may be a bit turbulent in this changeover.

One of discourse's decisive shifts.

Found on the Other Side of a 'To Do' List

Horror of groundlessness, of the reset button, of losing yourself in the attempt to uncover that elusive something worth believing in.
The reset button puts us back at the rawness of the experience, it sweeps away the illusions, self-fufilling structures of being that justify their own existance, the structures built to give us something to hold on to. We wipe them away and there is nothing to hide behind and the rawness of our response comes.

The Ugliest Ceramics in the World.

Apologies to whomever made them.

Overview

Trying to decide which of my photos might be appreciated as a gift for my two closest friends here in Chania. These are a few of my short list:





















In the end this process has become a bit of an assessment of all the photos I took whilst being away in Greece and Egypt. A natural closure.

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:

Thanks!

Big thanks to Sonia and Kathryn and the other folks for all your kind words :)

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.

Sticky

It's really hot here. Hot in a sticky mosquito-bitten irritating and grubby kind of way. I'm not coping very well.

I want to put something up though just to keep momentum. This image is a favourite from my recent trek down the Samaria Gorge. I want to write/post more about it later but the effort to concentrate is beyond me right now.

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...