Time

What does this image say to you, or rather, images? I have melded these two together and never the twin shall part. But can you intuit the country? How about the culture? Techies might discern the type of photo (of a photo).

From this picture of certain plants growing in a certain way around a certain type of window, what can we tell?

Much. We can tell a certain level of freedom. We can tell the:

Freedom to indulge
Freedom to select
Freedom to plant
Freedom to imagine growth
Freedom to own
Freedom to view
Freedom to wait

Many freedoms are implied in this one, relatively limited, albeit divine image. The facts are that the photo was taken in Brittany, France, in a port town called Saint-Malo. The image was captured by a male artist in 2012.

Brittany was first inhabited some 35,000 years ago. One of the oldest hearths ever found was found there. Time weighs heavier in Brittany than in some other, Time-light place, like NZ.

I think this is mostly about Time.

June

Sacha

Long weekend

Long-weekenders tread
in the sand and dirt

Few tread in -
stars
fall,
so to speak,
from somewhere to somewhere
not A to B

Land rises to meet sky,
sky sinks to land's level

Wind caresses all,
soft-love
and tough-love styles
mixed

Rain sleeps under crisp blue sheets

Almost elegant

Same night, another post. Another night post, this one a poem about the first words of Auden's I read that aren't entirely banal. Here I go...

'Dover... almost elegant' it is!

My mother used to holiday in Dover as a child, I've always loved the name because told about it in  Mum's fond remembering voice, presumably. This is my poem to Dover (for Mum).

To Dover

My mother saw the sea from Croydon there

The seaside always sounded exotic
Like the circus

I have never been
To Dover

I have always meant to go

One day, when I do go
To Dover 

I plan to see
The White Cliffs

Almost elegantly
There

Another night

When you get up in the night (it's presently 4.48am), and prowl around the dark house, feeling with your feet and fingers, it's always with mixed feelings. If I fell, I can't help thinking, descending the stairs without the aid of light, no one would have to know. The stairs have two windows between flights but there's very little street-lighting on that side of the house. If I fell and didn't make a terrible crash as I did I might lie here for the rest of the night, slowly but surely dying.

If I turn the toilet light on - the house where everyone goes - the back neighbours will know I'm up, surer than M will inside the house. I'd rather that be my business so I go in the dark. No difference really. Wash hands in a fuzz of night-eyes adjusting to the faint moonlight through the led-light window, one metre high.

Outside sleeps
No wind or birds yet
No neighbour buzz either,
All quiet and still, like a field.

Another night... (Central Park?)

The dark seeps in. Sat at the coffee table writing I am aware of the seeping dark. Beyond the light of the screen all is blurred black, like the black keys that ought, at night, to be white...

Oldest and youngest

Saturday again, this week birthday shopping for the oldest and the youngest Joneses. Nephew Wyatt who is turning One (1) and Nana who is turning... Ninety (90)!  

Narrow margins (Takapuna)
A Union Jack chair assumes pride of place in this second-hand book store. 
The English, a nation of readers.

Daughter Bs card for her youngest Cousin, Wyatt,
who lives in the Blue Mountains near Sydney.

The other photo is the shop in which we bought Mum's-Nana's 90th birthday present, a picture book on London in the glamour years: 1919-39. Nana was born smack bang in the middle of that period - and in London, hopefully she'll enjoy it. 

Oldest and youngest, interesting positions in a family to hold. Being a middle child I am unlikely ever to hold either position, though one never knows with oldest. 

Shore City today. People browsing along the mezzanine floor in their shopping sets. Man and woman, older and younger woman, female friend and female friend, father with young son on shoulders. Lone men, lone women striding. 

A couple stop to study the cakes through the glass at the shop where B and I are dining (cake and sandwich) at. Man and woman, the man is small and stylish, could easily be Italian.  They know their gateaux, the Italians. I am oddly flattered to see this small stylish man gripped enough by the cakes behind the glass to study them. I wonder which cake is worthy of such intent study on this early winter's Saturday afternoon at the mall.

B is so careful with her sandwich wrap it looks like she's undressing it. Delicate fingers peel back the thin plastic like a surgeon with burnt skin. The bread is caressed as if flesh, mistaken, in her hunger, for something more than mere maize. I'm into the sugar as usual. Coconut cheesecake tart with dollop of whipped cream. Fantastic.

The cafe looks down upon shoppers on the ground floor in the centre, Colosseum style. A shiny blue car and balloons to be won assumes pride of place. Bench seating in shades of coffee are puzzled together back to back, side to side, so that eight people are comfortably seated in two cubic squares without eye-balling each other. We mallers generally prefer to look than be looked at.  

B is in her 2012 trench coat. She's so thin she could be twelve, but still cute with her short bob hair and long coat. 

Time to head home, back to the warmth of the long weekend...

Soup for breakfast

How lucky am I to be able to pop up off my chair, go three steps to the fridge, retrieve an air-tight canister of delicious leftover meat and veg soup (my recipe and labour), heat it up in the microwave for one minute precisely then eat it sat rugged up with a blanket around my hips in front of the computer at 6.32 am on a Saturday!



How lucky am I!

Under doors

   

Night is like liquid - as is day -
One notices more at night.

At night I want to keep light in,
A small courtesy to the neighbours

It wants to seep me out

Between louvres
Under doors
Across floors

The day seeps too
We just don't notice it as much