Closer

Closer.

Another workshop today, working with words and music. We're preparing for a gig in a few weeks time. Lots of ideas are coming closer and blending, merging. Colliding. Sparking off each other and bringing new threads into play.

I'm interested in finding how to play with words and poetic threads like I do in improvised music. The abstracts in sound seem to help keep conscious thought out of the game. Not so with the words. They start telling stories, try to be funny, or clever, always seem to want to make sense.

I want my words to leave me behind

to let rip

to break out of line

I want to let them flick the switch

to river from me

to ride every riff

a slam dunk

a syllable frizzle

a radical doo wop

a verbal collision

You get the drift

I want my words to leave me behind

Dark rain

February's dark rain keeps me home.

And for once, I just sit here. Kitchen table. Back door open a crack. Drips and splashes accompany the radio. A fruit loaf bakes in the oven. A blackbird picks through the garden. This encaustic creation to ponder.

Back at the outdoor desk

Gets me every time. The leeks endured the snow. Withstood the big freeze. Survived attacks by crows and pigeons. Held on.

It's a sign of the extra light we get on the good days that the weeds are back. But who cares when leek and potato soup will be in the pan soon.

We still have a few parsnips in the ground. They've tasted the best ever this Winter, as if the extreme cold made them assert their flavour and scent even more than usual! And there's purple sprouting broccoli in cages. It's soon to come to plate and I'm determined not to share it with those crows.

So, as you can see, it seems like we're coming out of the Winter. These little narcissi seem to agree, as do the rhubarb shoots. After some weeding and trimming the other day, we sat beside the apple tree sipping tea looking at a plot turning back to green.

And despite this part of England having returned to being mild and very damp, there was one day when it was warm enough to do this.

Just for a while. Until the aching chill crept back into fingers and other places. Good to know that my outdoor desk still sets the work in motion. Feels so great that this is just a couple of minutes from home.

Six high tides later

Click!

Six high tides later, I went back, hoping to find it again. Walked the same yet different beach. Clattered over wet sculpts of hilled and troughed stones. Followed the phrase line where a scrape of sand swayed in rhythm and sloped into the foam.

Found many new things. Fewer star fish, less plastic, more whelk egg cases, so many lost tennis balls. Wreckage of sea drama, like stage props giving clues to a surreal play. But no sign of what I was really looking for.

So, it was good that I had taken a shot of it the other day, after I'd turned over an ordinary looking bit of wood and found something lovely..... Maybe next time, I will do the right thing and bring such things home with me?

A crow, a buoy and a bus stop

It was one of those unsettled nights last night. Gales lashing at the house, the sea hurling itself onto the shore, a wild party somewhere nearby. And in the restlessness of it all, thoughts and dreams wove odd stories and told me to write them down. But I kept my eyes closed and said I would in a minute.....

Something about a crow gazing out to sea, caged buoys jumping free and the bus stop was dancing.....

Today, in half a gale, I walked the wreckage of a wild beach and found a crab pincer that was longer than my hand, watched the lamp posts sway at odd angles, listening to the strange song metal makes in a storm and discovered that when it's this windy, the camera quite likes making little dreamscapes for me....

Caged buoys

Caged buoys.

The prospect of Summer, held back.

***

New shoots are greening parts of the garden. Not sure what is about to spring forth yet, but I keep going out to have a look and to breathe in that sappy flower shop scent.

There's a forsythia which is getting closer and closer towards bud burst, but waits another day and maybe another after that. I know it'll happen when I'm not looking, but I still check.

Today, I sat outside in the garden and did my writing, coat and scarf on, pot of tea beside me. A first, here in my new home. I've got a spot inside as well, right beside the back door, so I can look out without being rained on. All set for Spring.

It's so often far too windy for an umbrella as you walk along the road here, but there's a walk back from town along the colonnades where you don't get wet in the rain. Sadly, the sun lounge is long gone. It's now a music venue, but I like that they left the old sign. Might be a good place to do some writing as well.....