bluntie

lido, market, front seat of top deck of bus, another market, a very very empty turbine hall, circles of people watching other people pretending to be statues, covered in facepaint, cameras, large wheels, bens and bridges, palaces, parks, picnics. And, finally, the calmness of wolfgang tillman’s show at the serpentine gallery. so understated, large photos with smaller ones which were taped to the doors of fire cabinets, no fuss. really beautiful, i wish you could see it too. there is also an architectural pavilion masquerading as a cheap ‘pop-up’ coffee shop / american apparel corporate branding exercise. it is very red, but not much else.

my favourite photograph was this one, called Growth:

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.

work makes me think of long-haul flights, drink makes me think of food, a glass makes me think of broken, blue sky makes me look for clouds, being with someone makes me think of solitude, loneliness reminds me of love, and summer makes me think (not unkindly) of winter. not being a pessimist, but i doubt the new bougainvillea will make it to autumn, let alone through this next winter.
spent 3 days in lovely places; like John Soane’s House (more another time), like eating a cherry almond tart and a jasmine lily tea at a tiny cafe on church st, ricotta mustard toasts and a beer at Cafe Oto, like Abney Park Cemetery, like the bar at Moro, like the insides of many pubs, like london in the throes of visitors heaving as blood during exercise, somerset house’s wide courtyard gleaming in the sunny intervals.
so i’m tired. going to read newspapers, make a nest, eat carol’s courgette then find a mossy crevice and slumber like a large stone lion.

south of barcelona, in the heartland of the catalan industry of moving rocks, rubble, concrete, dust, ashes around in trucks.
calm and silent in a surrounding quarry, baking in the sun: a new cemetery of rocks, rubble, concrete, dust and ashes. like an undiscovered abney park, over decades the wild flowers and grasses covering the concrete, and the trees plunging it into shade.

4 tasmanians, probably the last time. gulls, tall houses, the man with the ice cream van, even the sunshine and wildflowers made me sad. although for a few hours i had forgotten.

woke up this morning at 5 by the bright sunshine, ran around clissold park at 7 (meg are you proud of me now) and it is beautiful and hot. ridley road market (more veg less beer in honour of impending beach), the car boot sale (funny sailor’s dress £1 in the style of someone else), dalston square (i’m so sorry)… none of these places seem like england now that it is hot.  about to have my hair chopped, although i worry because drastic changes really should not be undertaken during a lunar eclipse.

in switzerland plants grow so ferociously. a warm explosion of lush leaves and flowers of almost every colour. i am not exaggerating; blue, yellow, orange, pink, white, purple. all represented in any random handful of wildflowers grabbed from the meadow. suburban cats have long grass and high smells to roll in. the joggers, the children, the german-walking-sticks all rustling through plants.

the abundance is guilt-ridden, as if none but switzerland can afford to have plants that grow in the ground, and not in planters.  (although, i am writing this now sitting on my bed, neck against the fresh night air of a london sky that has not yet darkened at 10, and the air feels full and generous; the cold and the sunshine and the moon, the moist soil, a garden full of cats and trees. is it any surprise that i dont want to leave this spot by the window.)

it might also be her slice of life; while her neighbours in switzerand and in spain trim the lawn and sweep the concrete respectively, my grandmother’s houses are entwined and overgrown:

posts outdated, waiting for photos from meg to evidence the abundance of switzerland; the sped-up and amplified explosion of green. you can almost see it growing.
that this abundance is a key contrast between switzerland and australia (on the one hand) and, more unforgivably given the climates, england, needs no questioning. it is just the way it is. plants will stay in pots here, green walls will stay in designs, any wildness in streets trimmed.
I never thought about Paul Klee until wandering around the thousand works in R.Piano’s Zentrum Paul Klee, the building’s shining structure emerging from the ground; in countryside next to a highway, and the shell already being grown-over by trees, grass, wild flowers. Klee was particularly obsessed by nature, and nature that had been brought under control. He encountered this at the Englischer Garten in Munich, where meg and I had spent the previous day, and this synchronicity does not go un-noticed.

English translated is far more beautiful than english pure. These are some of the titles of Klee’s drawings:
A Canoe Walking Across Country
Does Not Enjoy
Half-hearted Approach
With Beard
A Hen in the Evening
Rigid and Animated Things Wander Ghost-like
And, in the midst of these thousand beautiful delicate free drawings; a handful of ‘untitled’s.

not yet, just a glimmer. bare legs ambitious.
i go walk around abney park cemetery often, dont know what season i prefer. winter is stark and brutally gorgeous but only if it snows, autumn obviously has coloured leaves which work well against the stone but then they too are turned to mush on the ground. summer is possibly the most beautiful, although i wasnt prepared for this spring.
spring has less meaning in australia; the winter is not cold enough or the summer fleeting enough for the metaphor to work. and here, already, the daffodils which were plump and juicy last weekend are starting to whither. so there’s another metaphor.
the weather omens were correct; just lost £16 on the steeple chase betting on the wrong horses; snowy morning and cloudy lane. if there had been a horse called squirrel i would be rich now.

is a warm sky, and pink is suddenly everywhere. i was home before dark and the flowering saucer plant was opening up.