bluntie

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.

(whose invisible cities i could not manage)
writes literary memos with relevance to wider reaching values for the future, on:
lightness
as melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness
quickness
no time to be idle and empty of feelings
exactitude
italian is the only language in which the word vague (vago) also means lovely and attractive; speaking of movement, mutability, uncertainty, indefiniteness, gracefulness and pleasure.
visibility
attempts to escape the vortex of multiplicity are useless!
multiplicity
And I realised the impossibility which love comes up against. We imagine that it has as its object a being that can be laid down in front of us, enclosed within a body. Alas, it is the extension of that being to all points in space and time that it has occupied and will occupy… But we cannot touch all those points. (from Proust – Remembrance of Things Past)

Lightness is my favourite. i wish i could be light and then my back would not hurt anymore.

1. house on barren island, croatia
2. floating forest, lake luzern, switzerland
3. hover-rock, Raleigh Beach, thailand
4. the isle of the dead, adreas bocklin, from meg’s childhood bedroom wall

as evidenced by happy cats and captain woofie.

is bougainvillea. in the sunshine of another latitude. i was stupid to hope it could ever survive in an english garden.

i don’t want to be a travel blog, but this hvar is beautiful rock plunging into cool turquoise adriatic. if you want to fill any hollowed heart, then float in salty water in sunshine for a bit and the gap in your chest will be replaced by a longing deep in the belly for chips and grilled calamari, for spaghetti, for pizza, milkshakes and beer. that day we ate boiled egg mayonnaise sandwiches while we air-dried our salt-crusted bodies (like a fine pork product) on a mat of pine-needles. the pine scent reminds me of tasmania.
also like tasmania; the grasshoppers who jump from each footstep, magically, and the sound of crickets.
the town is second in my memory to the landscape of the island. i imagine that we all are drawn to the landscape of our childhood, and this is barren and dry, with lavender fields and scorched hills like australia. snakes would like it here.
here are some photos in summery summary, more later about the hills, the old town and its lickable stone steps, and the improbable islands.

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.

a beautiful book to read on holiday in spain, lying on the beach under blue sky and sun: when you travel in iceland you see a lot of water. i want to go and see the northern lights and a lot of water.