lament

The tears of clouds

thinking home

~ A country lounge-about room for outdoors-loving moderns
~ A boudoir for an exotic beauty
~ A country living room for the stay-at-home mother
~ A dressing-room bathroom of unlimited extravagance
~ Backgrounds for blondes
~ Backgrounds for brunettes
~ Embellishing backgrounds for women of fading beauty
~ Enter Madame

The Personality of a House: The Blue Book of Home Design & Decoration, Emily Post, 1930.

daily small risks III

Talk to a hunter at dusk on a lonely country lane.

places where something might happen vol. II

The story begins with a woman who wears long yellow, cotton socks on her hands as gloves. It ends with two people meeting in a field of poppies. Or maybe it begins with two people meeting in a field of poppies and ends with a woman who wears long yellow, cotton socks on her hands as gloves.

pause under glass vol. V

Notes on slumbering under a glass shade:
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Static.
Preserved in aspic.
Hiatus.
Respite.
Holding breath.
Pause.
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All that is precious, encased. Glass domes denote value, consequence, substance.
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Recognition of the passage of time is avoided, by preventing dust from landing on the object contained within glass.
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Wardian case: protected glass houses for ferns.
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Tableau vivant: silent, motionless group of people, to be admired.
(Kate Matthews Collection.)
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Statues.
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pause under glass vol. IV

Photographs of photographs under glass, Isles of Scilly Museum

pause under glass vol. III

Various boxed birds, Isles of Scilly Museum

pause under glass vol. II

Motionless, boxed things, Museo Nacional de Antropologia (Mexico City)

pause under glass vol. I

Glassed-in alters and tombs in Tlalpan cemetery, Mexico City

isle of widows or places where something might happen vol. I

Samson, Isles of Scilly

Fiction

whistle what you would normally entrust to words

Not a blackbird, more like a swallow or perhaps a sand-martin.

[First off, go to Birdsong DAB radio channel, running 24 hours a day (click on the player at the bottom of the entry to listen to the live broadcast) to set the tone for the following post. The bird recordings were originally used as a test transmission on Classic FM prior to its launch and listeners currently enjoy the soundtrack again since the radio station Oneword ceased to broadcast on the 11th of January 2008 and the recording was used again as a substitute. Listeners are warned that the bird song could cease to be broadcast without warning at any time.]

. . . . .

'After a while the whistle is repeated - by the same blackbird or by its mate - but always as if this were the first time it had occurred to him to whistle; if this is a dilaogue, each remark is uttered after long reflection. But is it a dialogue, or does each blackbird whistle for itself and not for the other? And, in whichever case, are these questions and answers (to the whistler or to the mate) or are they confirmations of something that is always the same thing (the bird's own presence, his belonging to this species, this sex, this territory)? Perhaps the value of this single word lies in its being repeated by another whistling beak, in it not being forgotten during the interval of silence.

Or else the whole dialogue consists of one saying to the other "I am here," and the lengths of the pauses adds to the phrase the sense of a "still," as if to say: "I am still here, it is still I." And what if it is in the pause and not in the whistle that the meaning of the message is contained? If it were in the silence that the blackbirds speak to each other? (In this case the whistle would be a punctuation mark, a formula like "over and out.") A silence, apparently the same as another silence, could express a hundred different notions; a whistle could too, for that matter; to speak to one another by remaining silent, or by whistling, is always possible; the problem is understanding one another. Or perhaps no one can understand anyone: each blackbird believes that he has put into his whistle a meaning fundamental for him, but only he understands it; the other gives him a reply that has no connection with what he said; it is a dialogue between the deaf, a conversation without head or tail.'

Mr Palomar (Palomar's Vacation: Palomar in the Garden: The Blackbird's Whistle), Italo Calvino.

other people's various small pieces of ocean

Cut postcards in sketchbook

various small pieces of ocean

A roughly definable area of sea

While I was away, I was taking many photos of the changing sea. And then, fortuitously, I read the following:

'Mr Palomar now tries to limit his field of observation; if he bears in mind a square zone of, say ten meters of shore by ten meters of sea, he can carry out an inventory of all the wave-movements that are repeated with varying frequency within a given time-interval. The hard thing is to fix the boundaries of this zone, because if, for example he considers as the side farthest from him the outstanding line of an advancing wave, as this line approaches him and rises it hides from his eyes everything behind it; and thus the space under examination is overturned and at the same time crushed.'

Mr Palomar (Palomar's Vacation: Palomar on the Beach: Reading a Wave), Italo Calvino.

In fact Mr Palomar had many interesting things to say. The perfect holiday companion.

DO, DON'T TALK

Various resting positions
Source: Hiking & Lightweight Camping, A. M. Maynard, pub. by The Girl Guides Association, 1958.

A few days away.

An attempt to test out my theories of indirect communication: an island in an archipelago, a tent, no mobile coverage, no laptop. Just me. I'm not quite sure why I feel the need to make it so tough on myself, but somehow it seems necessary. And anyway, a very good friend has kitted me out with - amongst various other things - some excellent gear. And a marvelous guide to camping, Girl Guide style. Thank you Steven Bond.

Back towards the end of next week.

Vale!

valediction

Mourning ear-trumpet and mourning handkerchief of Queen Victoria.
Source: Death, Heaven & the Victorians, John Morley

. . . . .

vale 1 |vāl|
noun
a valley (used in place names or as a poetic term) : the Vale of Glamorgan.

PHRASES
vale of tears poetic/literary the world regarded as a scene of trouble or sorrow.

ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French val, from Latin vallis, valles.

vale 2 |ˈvälā| archaic
exclamation
farewell.

noun
a written or spoken farewell.

ORIGIN Latin, literally ‘be well!, be strong!,’ imperative of valere.

two roads

A 'two roads' chart: The Roads to Heaven and Hell, hand-drawn, from a scrap album.
Source: Death, Heaven and the Victorians, John Morley

4am serenade

I guess if you're going to be up at 4am, it's best if you're sung to by blackbirds.

two shadows talking