Revealed

It's now fading fast, but this is the wrapper that contained my bundle that hung out the Winter as part of the Disintegration Project set up by Seth over at The Altered Page. (Be sure to take a look at the other links that will be appearing there over this weekend. A treat in store.) Anyway, I've had this blue page on my desk all these months and soon the remaining shadowy lines will have faded away with the sunlight. Seems fitting that it goes it's own way and disappears from sight.

It's been a great project to take part in. I have had a ball. So many ideas have come from these lines that remind me of a reluctant star. I've been noticing that star shape in all sorts of places, particularly as I have been looking at one of my geraniums that sits on the window sill. It's own cycle of flowering and fading makes it's own disintegration project that I've felt compelled to take notice of.

The tea bags that came home as slightly damp and mouldy treasures have now fallen apart. The next shot is of the abstract that appeared on one of those bags as it hung in the rosemary bush.  I did nothing, just cropped the shot. 

The final shot is of a canvas that was a collage of lots of the other papers that were in the bundle. I made such a total mess with it. (But it was fun!) I had to resort to sticking it out in the rain for a week long weather wash. It was finished off with me throwing my ink pot over it and washing the final sticky dregs of rosehip tea away. 

But there is more....No surprise that the faded blue wrapper has brought writing as well. 

Running to the corner shop

Pavement cracks, a scatter of feet, laces coming undone, the adventure of each corner. Peep round. Keep a look out. Step off and DIE. Aghhhhhhhhh.....Faster faster faster, no one sees if you miss a corner. You are so fast no-one sees you anyway. You are just a seven year old boy who never shuts up. Invisible, obviously. 

Words pour out of you like a spell sung to the manic riffs of a blues harmonica and a bottle top band. Arms reach out to balance carefully, mouth set across sucked teeth, round that tricky bit that makes you go quiet. The lines suddenly become high walls raised to keep out invaders form the secret fortress. Invaders like you. Gymnast on a four inch beam. You leap in the air with one Kung Foo foot leading the way, and ruthless scissor arms slice off enemy swords. Fly, twist and land, pristine. A perfect 10, on the topmost stone.

From the turret, you gaze out at the web of walls, the territory spreading out beneath you, like a kingdom to be conquered. A map of lines, the veins of a river reaching the sea. You are running into it, you are so magic that you can touch the cracks now and you are immune. Feet, come on feet, keep up with this brave heart. They know which way to go. Could do it in the dark. Down through the labyrinth of high walls, avoiding dead end traps and pits of terror. Faster, so fast, you are almost off the ground. And as the last stones suddenly collapse and scatter apart and away into a sudden cliff fall, you watch them plunge into the breakers below of a raging white sea. Caught out of breath as the updraught drags you into a gulp of sky that pulls the parachute of your cloak into the gift of wings.

From way up there, the angles of the pavement cracks have become the luxury of smooth curves as you swoop and dive looking down on the strange world that has just become your own.

A patch of gritty sand

It always seems like such a luxury here, to find a patch of sand on a beach that is normally piled high with stones. The beach of my childhood runs wide and sandy for miles too far to see, a pale fringe to the flat lands of West Lancashire with not a stone in sight, so I am always surprised at how these meagre scrapes of sand like builder's amalgam can make me so content.

Breakers rush through the fallen arched roof of the West Pier, make dynamic shots for stooping photographers. Reckless waves catch them out and they all go home with wet feet.

The wind roars past my ears no matter which way I turn my head. Stones prop open my notebook where the elastic won't hold against this blast. The pages catch and flap, incessant. I look down at the words I just wrote. They move with the page. It looks like they are being written without me.

The sun catches the red light on the end of pier buoy as it lurches at an angle forced by the race of this tide. Unable to sway back to upright, the weight of the tide leans in, makes it stick on red.

One square yard

There's so much to see in just one square yard of the plot at the moment that I will forgive the sunflowers for choosing to turn to face over the fence.

Cats and bags

Coming soon to a blog near you, THE BIG REVEAL from the Disintegration Project, set up by Seth from The Altered Page.

On or around 1st August, participants will be revealing pieces that have emerged from this project over the last few months. It's tempting to let the cat out of the bag right now, however, I am going wait a little longer.

If you missed the original posts and don't know what I am talking about, why not take a look here and here, and come back to check in on some of work that will be appearing on and around next weekend. 

I'll probably be posting other stuff before then, but hope that like me, you will be looking forward to seeing what other folks have come up with.

Bach

All these years later, too dark to see the score, I discovered that I could still play you from memory.

Late. Big practise mute in place, I didn't want to be serenading my new neighbours. These were pieces for my ears only. 

Dancing through the familiar phrases, I found new ways to swoop through the lines, another stream to follow that tumbled underground and rose up bubbling, more spacious, more playful, more alive than I ever remember it.

Somewhere in the depths of me, I've kept those notes safe and secret, music learnt too many years ago to confess to you here.

Tide clock

On holiday

my only clock

is the rise and fall

of the tide.

*

This is the first space I've had for months to truly get cracking with creative projects. The luxury of having NO CLOCK WATCHING!! The floor is covered in sketches, notebooks, books left open, paints, glue sticks, scissors, a bag of sand, a couple of paintings drying....

It is total chaos and I am so happy because I don't have to tidy it all up like a maniac maid to make room for my day job. 

Good times.....

Rapids

White water rapids roar

swallow flights swoop to thread the breeze

eagles stroke the drift of grey wood smoke

pink-edged clouds brush the mountain.

Look out

Hard to tear myself away from some of the places and finds I have seen lately.

One of my favourite spots to look out is East along the coast from here. I sat on the cliffs watching the tide recede, the closest I could get without risking life and limb. And although I have sat and gazed from here so many times, it always feels like looking out over new territory. 

The waves hardly broke, so there was a huge silence out in all this sea space and I envied the gulls their easy drift over this scene. 

Close up to the old corrugated metal that fences part of my allotment, I found another world I could gaze at for hours. The kind of lovely surprise that you notice in the humdrum of clearing out all those accumulated handy things you know you will never use that you have kept behind the shed, just in case.

At the height of the growing season, there are wonderful things to see at every turn at the plot. Now that we've had 3 months' rain in the space of one day, my plot is also home to every weed in England. 

However, the first courgettes have been harvested and were wonderful. And yes, because of said weather, the glut is to come.

Red flags

Made for this wind surge, the gull and the windsurfer are in their element, surrendering to being carried. 

After the heat, the beach is back to being a wilder place. Red flags are up. The wind wrecks your hairstyle and I'm dozing in the sound bath spray, warm enough to be barefoot, bare-armed. 

The foam fades back into the rattling stones, like a fast frame film of snow melt in a high field.

Caged

A wooden kitchen chair sits on the pavement outside the cave-like hallway of a house left open to the breeze, like little scenes I've seen in Spain. 

The chores get left, I don't feel like lunch, my pen sits in the dip between pristine notebook pages and all I can think about is how soon can I put my feet into the sea. The street is deserted at lunch time and my headache pulls me into a dreamy siesta.

The weather has dictated my week, given me few real choices and obliterated thoughts from my head. Caged by the heatwave, I have found myself retreating from what I cannot change. It's been a slow week.

Voices spill into the tall purple shadows of the street as evening falls, voices that I can't match up with owners. Parents sit on steps, looking out into the dark as their kids scoot down the hill in the whooping freedom of staying up late on a school night. 

I close my eyes and drift off to sleep in the singsong spell of counting rhymes.

Shade

The courgettes are busy making their own forest while I hide in the shade. They are reaching out to neighbours across the patch, touching hands, making their own little micro climate that shelters the gold of gaping flowers and a place for a froglet to sway on prickly stems.

I water the parched ground with dark dregs from the container. The sunlight has stewed it into a green soup populated by weed, algae and pond life I do not recognize. The frog dives back into it, gulps down into the pale gold of old leaves fraying in the cool depths.

And I go home in the blue hypnotic shadows on the top deck of a bus that seems to stop for no-one as it heads into town.