Ephemeral

Burning incense.

Red

Farmhouse

Crash

Let's just say the journey back to health is a slow, tedious but at the same time wild ride.  There are days when I feel pretty good and the sun shines and the birds sing and the daily walks are a pleasure, and days like today when exhaustion rules, the brain is foggy and there is a Black Hole where my solar plexus used to be. This won't last I repeat to myself like a mantra. And I believe/know it won't. It just can't. 

The PC's hard disc crashed a couple of weeks ago and in retrospect I'm glad that most of my photos disappeared.  They weren't very good and the ones that were I'd already put onto Flickr.  Let go, let go, let go.  If I don't then the universe steps in and does it for me.  Happy though that I'm now able to download photos once again.

On days like this I get particular sustenance from colours like this.  Taken yesterday.

Climate

My entry for this week's Photo Friday challenge: "Climate". 

Taken five years ago just a few miles down the road. No snow so far this winter.

Circles

Shades of Brown

Therapy

Just about a year ago, as Saturn approached the ascendant, the ligaments of my lower back and sacro-iliac joints gave up the ghost. The centre, literally, could no longer hold. Displacement, severe muscle spasm and weakness and flare ups of acute inflamation and pain. Since then a repeat prescription for cocodamol, a round of alternative and conventional medical treatments and far too much TV.

It's dawning on me that the job is to rebuild the centre - and what is more central than the pelvis and lower back, and what they represent? Or rather to give it space to do the rebuilding. I imagined my centre could look after itself while I led a busy life but apparently this was not the case. Maybe this was the only way to get my attention. After much inner resistance I am revisiting relaxation and meditation techniques.

Six weeks ago I ventured outside again. Ten yards and back home, fifteen the following day, then twenty. Today I reached the next street up from mine. The first goal is to reach the river. At a guess, I'm just just under halfway there. The strangest feeling, learning to walk again. Each time I go out, a mixture of pleasure mixed with terror lest there is a setback. Learning to trust this body that, seemingly, has turned against me for a season.

For the first time for a long while I hanker after the scent of essential oils. Lavender scented body lotion, orange and ginger shower gel. The physical as a source of peace and pleasure.

A desire as well to get creative. Photographs. Blogging.

About the same time as the back went, the computer hard drive died, and with it my stock of photographs. Right now I'm using a friend's PC, loaned on approval. No photography programmes so no new photos.

But thank god for Flickr. I'll be reviewing my on line stockpile and posting some of them here from time to time - at least for as long as the back stability lasts.

Therapy, you might call it.

Record

2008. The ones that got away.

Many photographs never made it to the blog at the time they were taken. I am drawn to those taken in the colder half of this year. The clean lines. The light.



December. Christmas decorations. Taken in a local cafe.



December. London dawn. Awake early in a strange bed.



December. A commuter on the Tube leaning against a glass partition immediately to my right. If I were a palmist, he would have been offering up his life up for my inspection.



October. The neighbour's cat and the aloe plant.



November. Winter beans. Now sprouting.



October. Reflections, Durham.



February. Local park. Fog. Emptiness. Silence.



February. Detail. Water of Life Fountain by Stephen Broadbent, Chester Cathedral.


****

When we met, Relatively Retiring and I spoke about our respective travels. Did you keep a journal, she asked. No. And that is sad. In those days I relied on an excellent memory and an unreliable camera. Twenty five years on I understand that the former is neither trustworthy nor time-proof and that uncared for physical photographs eventually fade, are mislaid or you spill coffee on them.

And now I have a blog. It is a record, of a kind. Blogging has shown me the extraordinariness of the ordinary and the value of naming what is there. And that the quest for perfection is pointless if it leads to paralysis. There are times when you just have to shrug and press Publish and move on. It's still worth doing.

It is.

Happy New Year!

Passing

Tube

December 2

Le Plat Pays

Weide in de lente - Veldweg: Albijn Van den Abeele

Waiting in for a carpet to be delivered a few Saturdays ago I caught a fascinating radio programme, Brel et Moi, featuring the Belgian singer/songwriter, Jacques Brel and presented and written by Alastair Campbell (yes, that Alastair Campbell). Such a short life. A serial womaniser in Paris, a demanding paterfamilias in Brussels. Self centred and driven but loved by those he worked with and, heavens, what a talent.

Years ago the Brel song that seduced me was Le Plat Pays (the Flat Land), a love song to his native Flanders. A poem in its own right, lyrical and elegaic. I was born and spent my childhood in a similarly flat land of earth, water and wide skies on the other side of the North Sea and the song stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it. It still does.

Maybe only a Belgian could pull it off. Using each of the four winds Brel celebrates the different moods and seasons of this modest and - nowadays at least - peaceful stretch of land. He opens himself to embrace the rain and cold and the tedium and monotony, as well as warmth and sunlight. Winter. Summer. Everything in between.

The lyrics are below. I'm not attempting a translation. There are a few versions floating around on the web but they don't really reach the level of the original. According to one contributor to the programme there is a view that Brel's work is pretty much untranslatable and it's true that those songs that have made it into English haven't necessarily benefitted. One of the other contributors, Mel Smith, is a Brel devotee who neither reads nor understands French: the ferocious intensity, the sweat and saliva (literally) of Brel's performances were enough to captivate him.

Cue for a video of a mesmerising live performance of Le Plat Pays. Enough of my words. Listen.



Avec la mer du Nord pour dernier terrain vague
Et des vagues de dunes pour arrêter les vagues
Et de vagues rochers que les marées dépassent
Et qui ont à jamais le cœur à marée basse
Avec infiniment de brumes à venir
Avec le vent de l'ouest écoutez-le tenir
Le plat pays qui est le mien

Avec des cathédrales pour uniques montagnes
Et de noirs clochers comme mâts de cocagne
Où des diables en pierre décrochent les nuages
Avec le fil des jours pour unique voyage
Et des chemins de pluie pour unique bonsoir
Avec le vent de l'est écoutez-le vouloir
Le plat pays qui est le mien

Avec un ciel si bas qu'un canal s'est perdu
Avec un ciel si bas qu'il fait l'humilité
Avec un ciel si gris qu'un canal s'est pendu
Avec un ciel si gris qu'il faut lui pardonner
Avec le vent du nord qui vient s'écarteler
Avec le vent du nord écoutez-le craquer
Le plat pays qui est le mien

Avec de l'Italie qui descendrait l'Escaut
Avec Frida la Blonde quand elle devient Margot
Quand les fils de novembre nous reviennent en mai
Quand la plaine est fumante et tremble sous juillet
Quand le vent est au rire quand le vent est au blé
Quand le vent est au sud écoutez-le chanter
Le plat pays qui est le mien.

Jacques Brel

More insight into the inspiration for the song? There's a set of masterly, evocative photographs of Le Plat Pays here, just a click away.

I keep returning to them.

Change of season

I know. It isnt October. I just needed to blog.

This early autumn, with its golden afternoons and cold, clear nights is proving to be a gorgeous one. I stare at the flowers - autumn daisies, fuchsias, dahlias - and the changing leaves, trying to commit those vibrant reds and yellows and oranges to memory, to soak them up. Grey days lie ahead, and these have their own beauty, but I will miss the colours.

I ignore dire warnings about corrupted files, cross my fingers and, once again, switch on the ailing laptop ....

Face

One of a pair of stone carved heads on either side of an iron gate in Ludlow, where I met up with a friend a few weeks back. No idea who or what they are, nor of their age, though obviously this one has sustained damage during its existence. But the broad face with its high cheekbones and fleshy lips and those large, hooded eyes, is so compelling. I've been wondering whether a real person served as a model or if this very human representation in fact originated in the mind of the sculptor .....

The image keeps drawing me back. I'm not even sure if it's male or female. Raw material for the imagination to chisel and shape.

Five

1. Seriously large leaves. Magnolia macrophyllia, or Big Leaf Magnolia,a native of the south-eastern United States and one of the hundreds of trees from around the world at the local arboretum. Sunshine. Walking in the woods. Feeling heard. Listening in return. Good advice. More pictures on Flickr.

2. Friday 13th lived up to its reputation. A catalyst of a day that ended in tears. My colleagues are as hard working and caring as any I have come across but good management is vital. An organisation simply can't function without it. That's all I'm saying.

3. I meant to blog about this extraordinary photograph and article when it first appeared last month. The subject is a Premiership footballer who had just scored a decisive penalty goal and who had lost his mother earlier that same week. The author is The Times's art critic. On the quiet I'm a follower of soccer, but even if you aren't, do read it. The commenters debate whether the piece is celebrity-fawning or superb artistic analysis. My inclination is towards the latter.

4. The shoulder pain has lessened. Oddly enough, apart from the deep tissue work, what seems to have turned it around was tackling a full body massage myself and not listening to the internal voices that told me I shouldn't because of the injury. I went ahead. The friend was effusive. I loved it and am almost pain-free. We're doing it again.

5. I need to register as self-employed.

Photography, photography

A thought-provoking visit to the local photography festival, examining rural change and disruption in a globalising world and featuring the work of both South African and local photographers. I was particularly moved by the photographs of young people on the fringes of South African society, Between Dogs and Wolves by Jodi Bieber, and - closer to home - by the exhibition by college photography students.

It's inspired me to post some of my own recent shots taken around town. Nothing to do with globalisation. Just for the pleasure of it

Behind the counter ...

Overhead ...


Message ..

Crossing the river.

Cathedral: Stonemasons' yard

Tools for restoration: wooden workbench, the block of red sandstone, a hammer and chisel. A large mug for tea.

Later I notice the man, half hidden in the shadows.

People (Updated)

Update: Gut feelings are generally a good guide. I've taken down the additional photos that were posted here and to which the first two comments refer . After overnight reflection I wasn't comfortable having them them up on the blog - just too intrusive. Maybe I'll leave people shots to others. A shame because I find humans fascinating, but I don't have the stomach for it.

I'm still very fond of the juggler though.

A solitary juggler puts in a bit of practice on a rainy day in the park. I request a photograph.