Egg incubator - just in case.
Incubator
Egg incubator - just in case.
Egg incubator - just in case.
Preoccupations
A treasure hunt for warm eggs/perfect pub/sweetest village/largest lough/sweetest treat/greenest green/unsaid sentences/right decisions.
Airing woes
Airing woes is gladdening.
The air is clean with worry abandon.
The sultry June light cleanses, seduces, takes me out of myself, carries me through the long grass, tousles my hair, paints me a picture, reads to me, walks with me, helps me to bury left-laid eggs, takes a deep sea breath and sighs.
I'm wasted on you
May I be excused (again)
This soft evening light can't last.
The light shapes move towards me, shaping me, threatening impermanence.
Nothing lasts.
It's the moment of optimism for nocturnal possibility and the relief I survived another day.
Quiet descends, my tears sting, despite being eyeliner free/loveliner free.
Red cockrel wattle/displays of courtship.
Permanently marked names of animals on aging hand/desire to be loved by goats.
The light shapes move towards me, shaping me, threatening impermanence.
Nothing lasts.
It's the moment of optimism for nocturnal possibility and the relief I survived another day.
Quiet descends, my tears sting, despite being eyeliner free/loveliner free.
Red cockrel wattle/displays of courtship.
Permanently marked names of animals on aging hand/desire to be loved by goats.
May I be excused
Bon jour, I arrived with high spirits and a pinch of trepidation to the far flung reaches of Annaghmaconway, Co. Leitrim on Wednesday evening to the loving maison djeribi small holding. The sun cooled night air welcomed me on my virgin Ireland visit. I met the 38 residents (34 animals, 4 of the loveliest humans, + 9 soon to be hatched eggs), ate home made cheese on freshly baked bread, dipped in a perfectly soft-boiled egg. delicious. I spent Thursday & Friday listening carefully to advice on goat management, shy donkey nurturing, chicken curfews and nursery runs, cat diets, winding road directions in the turquoise left hand drive twingo, but most of all sharing in the excitement of the imminent exchange with Mari-Aymone of 'The Institute of Life Wonderful'. We will be writing about this most ingenious mutual fusion of 'life wonderful' on a dedicated blogette. Details will follow at some point, until then, some readers may be pleased to hear that I've lost the impulse to cry in the Deli aisle (there's little time between giving piggy backs in the long grass/being led to secret willow cabins in the bog wood). I'm on my own now and ask the full moon to not let any little fellas die on my watch.Manchester to Cloone
Harmonic music box charts the journey from here to an-otherness, planting a pip of excitement with each exhalation. The song of Manchester to Annaghmaconway is poetic, optimistic, the 'Institute of Life Wonderful'. I hear it again less far from home, in the music box magic of Irish folk songs, singing bon voyage, don't look back. No preparation needed this time, I’ll fly by the seat of my pants and be there with books, animals, pencils, parchment, bread, time and music. Clever Piano Migrations & Wonderous Hannah Peel
Goodbye bindery
We've had our good times, our quiet days, long cool nights, haunted stories, panic dashes, lonesome silences, emotional outpourings, tearful tutorials, secret confessions, unladylike language, a guillotine incident & a heartfelt kiss. Your walls have ears and I trust in them to hold each moment as they fall down.
daily vision
22 days ago a wonderful friend offered to send me a daily dose of inspiration, to feed something in me which lays dormant. It has begun to crack the chrysalis
Day 1The artist is the creator of beautiful things. [...] Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Day 2
...ex-lovers, all lined up on the mantle piece...Day 3
Entry no. 42
The tortoise is a funny creature. Its protection is so disproportionately heavy that it has lost all sense of speed. It is a wonder that anything with such an impenetrable shell can even open itself up to love. And yet somehow there is always a way into the heart of even the toughest customer. The tortoise will, eventually, lift up its shell and let its partner in... Danny Scheinemann, Random Acts of Heroic Love
Day 4
The tortoise is a funny creature. Its protection is so disproportionately heavy that it has lost all sense of speed. It is a wonder that anything with such an impenetrable shell can even open itself up to love. And yet somehow there is always a way into the heart of even the toughest customer. The tortoise will, eventually, lift up its shell and let its partner in... Danny Scheinemann, Random Acts of Heroic Love
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Like slipping stitches
or unmaking a bed
or rain from tiles,
they come tumbling off:
green dress, pale stockings,
loose silk – like mown grass
or blown roses,
subsiding in little heaps
and holding for a while
a faint perfume – soap,
warm skin – linking
these soft replicas of self.
And why stop there?
Why not like an animal,
a seed, a fruit, go on
to shed old layers of moult,
snakeskin, seed-husk, pelt
or hard green-walnut coat,
till all the roughnesses
of knocking age
are lost and something
soft, unshelled, unstained
emerges blinking
into open ground?
And perhaps in time
this slow undoing will arrive
at some imagined core,
some dense and green-white bud,
weightless, untouchable.
Yes. It will come,
that last let-fall of garment,
nerve, bright hair and bone –
the rest is earth,
casements of air,
close coverings of rain,
the casual sun.
Beatrice Garland
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Day 5
undressing
Like slipping stitches
or unmaking a bed
or rain from tiles,
they come tumbling off:
green dress, pale stockings,
loose silk – like mown grass
or blown roses,
subsiding in little heaps
and holding for a while
a faint perfume – soap,
warm skin – linking
these soft replicas of self.
And why stop there?
Why not like an animal,
a seed, a fruit, go on
to shed old layers of moult,
snakeskin, seed-husk, pelt
or hard green-walnut coat,
till all the roughnesses
of knocking age
are lost and something
soft, unshelled, unstained
emerges blinking
into open ground?
And perhaps in time
this slow undoing will arrive
at some imagined core,
some dense and green-white bud,
weightless, untouchable.
Yes. It will come,
that last let-fall of garment,
nerve, bright hair and bone –
the rest is earth,
casements of air,
close coverings of rain,
the casual sun.
Beatrice Garland
Day 6
Life itself is not reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles.
Frederick Sommer
Day 7
Never, never, never give up. Winston Churchill
Day 8
Today is just a list of some favourite words:
humbug, vexed, bonnet, bumblebee, azure, candlewick, hedgehog, serendipity, wearisome, arse, honeysuckle, blizzard, goliath,
onamatapoeia,foppery,mellifluous....
Day 9
So like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us. Gaston Bachelard
Day 10
Inspired by last night's talk of new prospects - one of sylvia's photographs
Day 11
One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night. Germaine Greer
Day 12
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. William Wordsworth
Day 13
It was dark by the time I reached Bonn, and I forced myself not to succumb to the series of mechanical actions which had taken hold of me in five years of traveling back and forth: down the station steps, up the station steps, put down my suitcase, take my ticket out of my coat pocket, pick up my suitcase, hand in my ticket, cross over to the newsstand, buy the evening papers, go outside, and signal for a taxi. Heinrich Böll, The Clown (Ansichten eines Clowns)
Day 14
How does a project mature?
It is obviously a most mysterious,
imperceptible process.
It carries on independently of ourselves,
in the subconscious,
crystallizing on the walls of the soul.
It is the form of the soul
that makes it unique,
indeed only the soul decides
the hidden 'gestation period' of that image
which cannot be perceived
by the conscious gaze.
Andrej Tarkovsky
It is obviously a most mysterious,
imperceptible process.
It carries on independently of ourselves,
in the subconscious,
crystallizing on the walls of the soul.
It is the form of the soul
that makes it unique,
indeed only the soul decides
the hidden 'gestation period' of that image
which cannot be perceived
by the conscious gaze.
Andrej Tarkovsky
Day 15
Forgotten Narratives 1 of 2 - one of sylvia's photographs
Day 1s
Forgotten Narratives 2 of 2 - another of sylvia's photographs
Day 17
Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays. Friederich Schiller
Day 18
a little passage from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca:
Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. Lost key, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor. I hate it all. Even now, when I have done so much of it, when I live, as the saying goes, in my boxes. Even today, when shutting drawers and flinging wide a hotel wardrobe, or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa, is a methodical matter of routine, I am aware of sadness of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy. This has been ours, how ever brief the time. Two nights only have been spent beneath the roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not an hair-pin on a dressing-table, not an empty bottle of Aspirin tablets, not a handkerchief beneath a pillow, but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood.
This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. Today we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again. Even stopping for luncheon at a wayside inn, and going to a dark, unfamiliar room to wash my hands, the handle of the door unknown to me, the wallpaper peeling in strips, a funny little cracked mirror above the basin; for this moment, it is mine, it belongs to me. We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass.
And then I open the door and go to the dining-room, where he is sitting waiting for me at a table and I think how in that moment I have aged, passed on, how I have advanced one step towards an unknown destiny. We smile, we choose our lunch, we speak of this and that, but - I say to myself - I am not she who left him five minutes ago.She stayed behind. I am another woman, older, more mature . . .
Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. Lost key, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor. I hate it all. Even now, when I have done so much of it, when I live, as the saying goes, in my boxes. Even today, when shutting drawers and flinging wide a hotel wardrobe, or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa, is a methodical matter of routine, I am aware of sadness of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy. This has been ours, how ever brief the time. Two nights only have been spent beneath the roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not an hair-pin on a dressing-table, not an empty bottle of Aspirin tablets, not a handkerchief beneath a pillow, but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood.
This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. Today we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again. Even stopping for luncheon at a wayside inn, and going to a dark, unfamiliar room to wash my hands, the handle of the door unknown to me, the wallpaper peeling in strips, a funny little cracked mirror above the basin; for this moment, it is mine, it belongs to me. We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass.
And then I open the door and go to the dining-room, where he is sitting waiting for me at a table and I think how in that moment I have aged, passed on, how I have advanced one step towards an unknown destiny. We smile, we choose our lunch, we speak of this and that, but - I say to myself - I am not she who left him five minutes ago.She stayed behind. I am another woman, older, more mature . . .
Day 19
Every person's story is written plainly on his face, though not everyone can read it... August Sander
Day 20
The Sleepers
No map traces the street
Where those two sleepers are.
We have lost track of it.
They lie as if under water
In a blue, unchanging light,
The French window ajar
Curtained with yellow lace.
Through the narrow crack
Odors of wet earth rise.
The snail leaves a silver track;
Dark thickets hedge the house.
We take a backward look.
Among petals pale as death
And leaves steadfast in shape
They sleep on, mouth to mouth.
A White mist is going up.
The small green nostrils breathe,
And they turn in their sleep.
Ousted from that warm bed
We are a dream they dream.
Their eyelids keep the shade.
No harm can come to them.
We cast out skins and slide
Into another time.
Sylvia Plath
No map traces the street
Where those two sleepers are.
We have lost track of it.
They lie as if under water
In a blue, unchanging light,
The French window ajar
Curtained with yellow lace.
Through the narrow crack
Odors of wet earth rise.
The snail leaves a silver track;
Dark thickets hedge the house.
We take a backward look.
Among petals pale as death
And leaves steadfast in shape
They sleep on, mouth to mouth.
A White mist is going up.
The small green nostrils breathe,
And they turn in their sleep.
Ousted from that warm bed
We are a dream they dream.
Their eyelids keep the shade.
No harm can come to them.
We cast out skins and slide
Into another time.
Sylvia Plath
Day 21
"A cultivated woman - a woman of breeding and intelligence - can enrich a man's life immeasurably. I have those things to offer, and time doesn't take them away. Physical beauty is passing - transitory possession - but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all those things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years!"
Blanche DuBois' (Vivien Leigh) in A Streetcar Named Desire
Blanche DuBois' (Vivien Leigh) in A Streetcar Named Desire
Day 22
Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is right at their heels. Bertholt Brecht
I live in a box of paints
I can't bare the beauty today.
Something to sing
Something to sing
Searching for a room of one's own
'For a moment I thought I loved her,
but I am full of interior rules that act like brakes on my desires.'
The Great Gatsby, F.Scott Fitzgerald.
Guest Speaking
On Wednesday 27th May I have been invited by the wonderful Arvon Foundation to be a guest speaker on the poetry and book making course at Lumb Bank in Yorkshire. I will be giving a talk about my work and a reading from my recent Shetland residency musings. I will dine with the course participants and sleep over in the magnificent residence once owned by Ted Hughes. http://www.arvonfoundation.org/pc380.html
Dust
A gift horse landed on the post mat last tuesday. Three weeks in the remote western plains of Ireland, feeding plants, chickens, cats, a donkey, a baby goat, with time enough to write, wander, fill my lungs with rich green air and retreat. My promised payment = my body weight in flour. It's been a dusty month and no matter how wide I open the windows or how fast I bicycle, I am laying silently, with nausea, in hope, with thick dust-moth aftermath. Anticipation suppresses my appetite. 21 days in June for pure exploration - hold fast on all other endeavours.
LMS Trainline
I climbed aboard a steam train I share my initials with. The noble lady took me there and back, fueled by black diamonds, an understanding driver and gentle enthusiasm.
A Dance for Displacement
Dancing three times a week numbs lust-caution/swing it .
I imagine what my body will look like/ lindy one.
Obsession and desire with a side of olive advice/waist slide.
A long wait ahead/Lady-goes, man-goes.
The concentration of landscape yearning/around the room.
in preparation for unseen man rays/ new york stroll.
Sweet smell sweat sublime.
I have to go through this/ it was written.
I WANT TO MAKE ART (instead I dance).
Wishes and Kisses
I wish you here to soothe a primal fear
I wish you here brimful of tingling firecracker thoughtsI wish you here on a blanketed balmy evening with all possibility before us
I wish you here to kiss me in the morning
I wish you here with a vast hand spread eagled cradling my cheek
I wish you here to feel a mouth migrating to a neck, palms matched
I wish you here breathing me in, filling your lungs with scent for a long cold winter
I wish you here as piercing diagonal sleet sweeps across the landscape
I wish you here to escape the poorly of soul and tired of mind
I wish you here to bottle thoughts with exquisite memory
I wish you here pacing around me like a wary wild thing
I wish you here while the creaking floorboards of my soul ache at the movement of my memories
I wish you here to provide a brow stroke, a hand squeeze, a sign
I wish you here to catch a string of opaque pearls on your cotton sleeve
I wish you here as two souls in the night search for the truth and the words to give it wings
I wish you here to reap the truth from the fields of fear
I wish you here feeling forlorn, lovelorn
I wish you here with reassuring words swimming through warm air docking on sad earlobes
I wish you here to see confusion give way to clarity, paper covers rock
(typeset and letterpress 'wish you were here' cards printed in silver ink on off-white beer mat board, edition of 1000 available at all the usual lovely places).
Daylight serenade
Romantic tendencies = fifteen minute hugs. Exhausted limbs = tipsy quickly. Loose lips sink ships. Raincoats deflect affection. Comforted by news of 'tree schools', fed wisdom and philosophy via a pipette. Looking back to innocent times breeds a melancholic lingering pause, eyes well water. Remembering why I make/I dressed up and found badger death worth noting.
Days are blurred
Voices through the walls joyously celebrating. An inconsequence, an invisibility painfully visible in the slate grey aura surrounding a muddled head. The good ship endurance is inspiration enough. Windswept and numbfaced I cling on, just. Footsteps of trepidation in a sea of uncertainty. Look west towards the east and set sail once more. Leave all those with regrets far behind, missing you/missing the point. This is the get out of city free card, awarded to those who posses least fears. Everything is just a decision away.