bluntie

being a capriquarian in a world of beautiful bulls.

is clearly not for me. crowds, crazy sunglasses, jerk chicken and pissing in the streets. But it is amazing and next year I will be better prepared. Street after boarded-up street full of crowds, crazy sunglasses, jerk chicken and pissing. Smoke-filled from the barbecues. Shrill with whistles and heavy with the bass of a hundred speakers which made my lungs contract. At times we thought we were walking away from it, but it continued, and as we made our way through from one side to the other the crowd became more and more waste. Or, that was the passing of time. Empty red-stripes and polystyrene chicken containers floated in drifts in the gutters, and somehow i stepped on a cheeky rat. I say on, but I mean in. It was well dead.

how could you possibly invade against the white chalkiness of these cliffs? this is what i think of england, must be from watching too much kiera knightly. the clouds are english, the weather is english, the surrounding pubs are very. shocking white cliffs, then tiny war-time bunkers, still there and rocky in the barren landscape.  must have been cold and damp in there, must have been aching.

The train departs in a sunny interval and slides between the upper levels of terraces and warehouses, their east faces lit up.
Then quickly expanding and wide, the overgrown stinky greenness of hackney’s marshes begins the pattern of outer London: the green, the remnants, the disused railway bridges, the rusted gas holders, the allotments, then warehouses. This is the Lea Valley. Industry melts into ditches of grease, geese, swans, a hundred dusty white vans.
On my left are the backs of  terraces, with their washing on the line and their lace curtains in the windows. To the right are so many trees, the saplings suffocating the old, undergrowth creeping into the canopy, weeds towering over ponds and stinky crevices. And then a power station. This valley will be one of the cradles of the post-apocalyptic world.
And then I am into the gently sloping pastures. If you have an empty heart, a positive side of this is that even small amounts of sunshine, a scrap of blue sky, a brief message, a short story, quick journey, glances, flickers, glimmers… all make it completely weightless.

Is this what it feels like to be Norwegian? So many things to make me smile in a single day:

^The memory of Victoria Plum, my saviour on that harrowing day 18th january 1987, when I was taken landscape painting in the 40degree Clare Valley heat, and when a fatty tiger snake crossed my dusty path.

^From nowhere, a heavy downpour for 5 minutes. Or maybe it was more prolonged but localised in this small patch of nowhere. Don’t be fooled by the sign, Cambridge City Centre is an hour ride away. Imagine me sheltering in the woods, building this quick shelter on Grug’s prototype. The sun came out instantly, just like the moral of this story.

^ Thatch is lovely, so thick and spongy. Again Grug’s hair.

^ And then, amongst all the thatch and winding roads, immediately after the rain and unpleasant wind, there it was: An Australian landscape. By some trick of the crop the land looked parched, and the sky was wide, opening up toward the A14.

And a cacophony of animal. Cows on the cycle path, cats in the lanes, ducklings in the river, bunnies in the golf course, two turtle doves, and a foil sealed baby frog for the journey home, gross. I savour the journey home, as the train goes through Ponders End which is my spiritual home and where I hope one day to settle.

rainbow at the end of the world.

repost: amazing photo of a gathering of starlings; Starling Wave by Danny Green. (won last year’s black and white category for the BBC wildlife photograph of the year. one of this year’s entries is this one of penguins; Back In Front Out by Esa Mälkönen. after pairing up, the birds take it in turns to incubate the eggs while the other walks to sea for food (white fronts have the eggs, black backs are returning from sea).

evil thoughts and schadenfreude darkened blacky’s sunday morning, having trouble deciding between gardens. idleness is not shady, idleness is light and transparent, can you do any wrong if you are outdoors and idle? on the other side of victoria park is the daylight robbery of car motors; pro-active but ultimately sin-filled.

x carol. maybe i can be back here?

this is a local topical blog by the youngest tasmanian hamilton in london, ricky. the daily entries are a study on the transrotational nature of the streets of east london; eternally shifting but never really changing.
chicken bones and their packaging are the product of a tide of inhabitation which sweeps twice daily and three times a night through east london’s streets, houses, pubs and buses. london fried chicken is the base unit of waste in the area, the lowest cost protein in the world and a great social leveller because everyone loves fried chicken, not least the communities of local cats.
also, in a head-spinning interconnectedness if you click on his links he gets cash from google.

visually related: bones, of the prolific and notorious 70k crew. which reminded me of the awestruck discovery early one morning in deserted melbourne (chicken bones yet to be swept from the gutter) of an empty office block whose windows had been filled with tags. beautiful and noble as the sun rose, and, as either public art or filigree sunshading (nouvel…) unrivalled in scale or value engineering.

it is embarrassing for me that i write and suddenly realise that i have created in my mind a vivid and direct connection between jean nouvel and chicken bones.

couldnt work out what these were for a while… how old? really old?  they are  just on the verge of being part of the natural landsdcape, part of the man-made. is just simple terracing on the slopes not mystical but necessary to keep the soil still and the lavender crop happy.