Greening

Still looking stark from below, maybe they have surprised themselves by bursting out into leaf too soon, too gaudy in a sun still thin. But viewed from down the street, together they make a blush of green, bright against the slate of frowning sky. 

Everything is slightly odd in this light. The tall narrow houses are the colour of melting ice cream. Their shadows are purple grey. Their top floors still flooded with sun have a pink tinge like cheap makeup. 

Behind the blossom, behind the tree tops full of chirrup, a small luxury - the first seclusion from the neighbours across the street.

Friday kicks

It wasn't easy to sit on the beach yesterday. Even behind one of the biggest walls, the spray came round the corner in airy breaths, the wind sneaked down the back of my neck, snatched at my notebook, and I struggled to write while my hands were somewhere up my sleeves. I know - foolish to leave gloves behind so early in the year.

Thing is, my need for shelter meant I couldn't sit and look full on at the wreckage of the pier that inspires me. I think if I had done that I would have been blown home like a crisp packet.

While I was imagining myself to be looking at the pier from another angle, a man went for a swim. Once in the sea, the raging waves made the white of his swimming cap look like a ping pong ball, sitting high on the water. I watched that white dot dance in the distance as he did double arm backstroke in a lurching line that seemed to go nowhere despite his efforts.

He rode, he was driven, he was debri, and then he surrendered to a blissful looking float, out beyond the breakers, where he found a surge that carried him high in the peaks and low into the shadows of the troughs without taking him to shore. His Friday kicks looked great fun, but I did feel a bit of motion sickness.

This sketch was done last year from the spot I was wanting to sit in. What I was interested in, yesterday, was to look at part of the wreckage that reminds me of six pairs of work jeans pegged out on a clothes line. I realized that I've never sketched them. I guess the 'jeans' are swathes of material that have fallen from a ceiling long burnt out. But the thing about them is, they don't move in the gale, as proven yesterday on the windiest day for weeks. 

Further beach stake-outs are needed, obviously.

Rub a dub

Sleeves rolled up

elbow grease

frantic 

rub a dub

in the dolly tub

mangled

strangled

beaten on a rock

the tide 

washes the beach.

Bye bye eagle eye

Another busy week. Already I'm aware of the pull towards the weekend and less time dictated by the clock and the calendar.

On my table, nearing completion, are projects that are about to go out into the world. New ventures for my writing. And the tyranny of deadlines and editing and the inevitable eleventh hour running out of ink. All very new to me. 

Part of me baulks at that word. A dead line isn't an attractive phrase, let's face it. However, I am thinking of it all in the much friendlier image of my work having a certain train to catch. Of course, it's a very reliable train that will never leave late due to signals or leaves on the line. It helps that I live up a steep hill from the station and my real train journeys always begin with a whoosh towards gravity that always makes it seem like the start of an adventure. I am applying this same feeling to my image in the hope of sending my writing out with a bright attitude.

The story that has lurking in me these last few weeks has finally found form on paper. Sleepy-eyed, but light with it all somehow, I am feeling relieved that my head is less full than it was a few days ago when the story possessed me like it was moving into the rooms I reserve for such life-saving priorities as daydreaming and gazing into space.

Last night, I played an improvised ensemble set. Guitar, double bass and violin. And we had a ball, creating something with no safety net, no plans, just the aim to have a musical conversation. Free jazz is not everyone's cup of tea. We did not play anything that could be called free jazz. It was it's own world with hints of swing and riff, but wonderful, magical and totally itself. 

I guess it is the musical equivalent of doodling, or writing free flow, the difference being that we usually do these things solo. Anyway, remedy to my eagle eye week, it was a tonic to go with the flow in an abstract world created moment by moment.

It's been disorientating for me to have had less notebook time this week. Good to focus on bigger projects as well. What makes it all better is to know they will be waiting for me once I get back from the post office. 

Hoard

Buzz in my head. Fast flow film. Silent. Packed with images like I am driving through them and then flying above them in a free flow flood, not in control of where I am being flown to. Like being in a dream, except awake.

I guess I am in a word rush. There is a speed to their arising that I've never noticed before. On the go. Alive. Even late, after work when I normally run out of steam, a happy flood arrives on my pages.

It has left me wondering how to organize such a hoard. Not the bigger threads that are self contained story ideas, but the small snatches that shine within the pages of everyday ramblings. All I can think of is to use an alphabetical notebook with lists of all the g words together etc. A "words I like " daybook - possibly in a diary used just for this purpose. Or some kind of homemade thesaurus. But then, the horror of that idea hits in of how long I could spend on such an enterprise. And I guess some people do it that way, but it sounds like a massive distraction from the real work. 

Key words. Threads that lead out from a hub. A web. Post it notes like flags on the pages. Doodles with lots of links. I am finding out what works, mostly by finding out what doesn't. 

And so I have a question for any creative folks who might be interested in replying - how do you organize keeping track of images in your notebooks and sketchbooks so you can find them again without having to re read through piles of books in search?

Push and pull

Watching the painting of the sky in progress, the wind is wild. I hide behind a high wall as papery whelk cases tumble over me, like snowballs thrown into the air for the sake of seeing them fly. 

The wind pushes me home. Drags me from an urge to doze in the sun for an hour.

I take it as a sign. The story is waiting.

Gold on grey

Rain licked. Grit swept. The old roof leaked. 

Higher than my reach, wider than my stretch, I had to let other hands and arms mend the shed. I pottered and dug at a small distance, happy to watch the new pristine felt restore the roof to it's former glory.

Neat. Ready for the weather again after our blasting Winter. 

I miss the patterns of gold lichen against the bare charcoal grey.

Inspiration Award

Mixed media martyr has nominated me for this Inspiration award. Thank you, Leanne. I'm so pleased to accept it and will be passing it on soon. So watch out - it might be you!

Life feels hectic at the moment, so receiving something like this is a huge boost. Coming out of our dreary Winter into a sudden radiant burst of Spring, I am struggling. My feet want me to be out on a hill every hour of every day. 

Yesterday, I had a date with a hill. I can still hear the flood of Skylark song that rained down on me from the moment I put my boots on. 

Today, the house is full of wonderful bright light. I have to work later, but I've left my creative projects on the table, so I can see them from across the room as I work. No prizes for guessing what I'll be doing as soon as I get a break.

Lines

Re-tracing every line, the eye is drawn in to follow the plane trails that show how wide the sky is before it fades into the pale shimmer haze of the sea. Criss cross and back again, they look like chalkboard marks from a shaking hand.

The seed has been cast into blinding white earth, that somehow will bear a heavy crop. Furrows race ahead and fall behind the round height of a hill with tracks like corduroys and woolen socks that meet at a ragged path on the field's edge and a hedgerow full of chaffinch song.

Old meanders, like white erratic veins, follow the ways the water has found a way down. Footpaths are patterned with the prints of boots and horseshoes in the greasy grey of many-times-walked chalk, half-baked in this sudden, ecstatic Spring. 

Slow between the tides, the river cuts a lazy curve of green. The banks are sculpted into clumpings of blond reeds with white manes. Slick silver mirrors of mud like newly rendered walls, slope into the deep and invite feet.

I love ink

I love using ink. For drawing with lovely bamboo pens or twigs. For writing with a fountain pen. However, in ways mysterious and invisible to me, I always seem to get it in places I didn't see it running to, like far up my sleeve or so that it escapes and falls in a little stream off the edge of the table.

In an attempt to make less mess, I have started to use blotting paper again. I found some thick pink pieces at the back of my cupboard - have had them stashed away for years. 

Today, after finishing some writing, I noticed the piece I've been using these last few weeks. I wasn't aware of the accidental marks my history of desperate moppings was creating. Strange coincidental blurrings have made a little world of their own. And I like it.

I love the idea that while I was doing something else, a little bit of magic was happening beside me.

Shorn

In the whizzing, buzzing drive of the clippers, a heavy harvest of dark curls fell down. His work mates cheered. Rosie from Accounts planted a luscious lip smacker on his newly bald head. The impact of his pledge didn't hit him until he carried the toys into the children's ward.

Day job

1001 things

on my mind

unravelled

as work began.

You played Mozart.

I listened.

Daffs

The wet sap of daffodils, runs through the house. Golden pollen twitches as orange mouths begin to sing out. I want to eat the flowers, to feel like I can eat sunlight.

They leave traces of a damp forest here. Wet wood litter, old leaf rot, saturated sponge of dripping moss beneath cold feet that wish they were feeling warmth in front of a raging fire. 

Opening the post next to the vase, I am out in blue twittering light, gazing at a web of bare black branches lined with pink shadows, and I suddenly come to a tree with catkins. Festive. Filling up the spaces. Colouring them in. 

Double yellow

Double yellow

down the backstreet

paints 

every dip and rise

down to the sea.

***

Gordon Mason at Catapult to Mars has posted another of his poems inspired by one of my pieces. Here's the link to the poem which has a link that will let you listen to the music.

There will be another piece soon worked the other way round - so starting with Gordon's poem, I am writing some music. Slow going at the moment, but watch this space.

Flurries

Pushed home by the reckless wind

sand flurries keep me company

swirl around my feet

as I am jostled along. 

Low to the ground, 

they run riot

like a river estuary ignores

the pale blue gridlines of a map. 

They dance

luge through fantasy canyons 

on the black runway of the promenade. 

In a lull of the windblast

I hear them sighing.

Finds

My friend picked up a bright penny from the pavement. We shared stories about finding money in the street as we walked towards the beach. Crossing the stones to go and sit close to the low tide waves, I found a fiver. We couldn't stop laughing, couldn't quite believe it was waiting there on the deserted beach. 

£5 isn't a huge sum, but the timing of finding it and the laughter made for a good end to the week.

Halfway

Odd. After crawling up the High Street slower than slow, but still making small progress, the bus always came to a juddering and lingering stop outside the Taxidermist's. 

We all peered in. Quiet. Pensive. It was a shop full of curiosities, like something from back in time, advertising a range of services including having your own specimen preserved, hires and sales from stock. Bizarre and yet, well-established in the everyday of newsagents, office supplies, kebab sellers and fruit stalls half way to my work.

And I always wanted to stand on the corner opposite and see who the customers might be and what they might have tucked under their arms. Appointments only, it said on the door.

Sky grid

Not much left of one of Brighton's piers. The West Pier is a burnt out wreck of bare bones, sculptural and beautiful still, but abandoned to the hurl of weather and the fury of tides.

In my beach walk yesterday, before the storm hit in, I saw that some more of the support structure on the beach has been removed, leaving more sky where once there was a grid and mesh of metal when you looked up. Once there was a walkway here, where you could part with money and don a red safety helmet to join a rare tour that tentatively ventured out into what was left, into what was thought to be safe. 

There haven't been any tours for a while. The walkway has tumbled into the waves, leaving one part diving down into thin air, hinting that there might have once been a big dipper that plunged under the waves. 

I often go and sit there, best time being at the lowest tides when it's possible to walk between some of the pillars and roof beams on their sandy bed. It has been the inspiration for many sketches and lots of writing. I love the grids the structures make against the background of the sky. And this is a sketch of part of the main body that is furthest out from the shore, a tiny part of the whole.

Last night, as I listened to the rage of the storm throwing itself down the street, I was reminded again, that one day, I will go to the beach and it will all be gone. 

Kilfenora

The sway, the lilt, the skip, the rise, the lulling repetition, the spin around to the inevitable falling of the cadence. While the notes poured out of the fiddle, he wanted to be transported to playing it on the wooden floor of an empty hall, looking out to the bleak beauty of The Burren and the snaking walls of Clare that edge out towards the sea like ancient snail tracks across vivid patchwork in every shade of green. 

And he wanted the jig to bring the hard shoes of a dancer into motion across that floor, to make the embroidered knotwork of birds and snakes on her dress come to life in a scoop of spirals and an eyeful of leaping swirl as the cloth began to dance into and out of view, brightening the plain hall like the prospect of sun drives in across the rocky harbour of the bay.

Words run

Sunday afternoon solitude. Strolling in the last pink of sky. I got lost in my notebook walking out by the sea. Streams of words ran like they would never have any reason to pause. 

I watched them emerging from my pen like they had a life of their own separate from me, read them this morning like they were written by someone who I am only just getting to know.