Tuesday 29 January 2013

Wrought



wrought fraught caught fenced dense leafy

Saturday 26 January 2013

Distant


 In the local library I found a DVD of Uzak, an early film I hadn't seen by probably my favourite director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Uzak means distant, and refers to the distance between origins and maturity, ideals and reality, and the emotional distance between the cheek-by-jowl inhabitants of the city. It's a spare, naturalistic film whose long pauses between words and actions are illuminated by subtle, engaging acting and achingly beautiful photography. It occurred to me that all of these are characteristics shared by British director Joanna Hogg's more recent work, Archipelago, which I also borrowed from the library. Both are films whose stories are inner ones, implied rather than acted out - a very difficult thing to do well, and Uzak does it so much better. 
 

Sunday 20 January 2013

Under the snow, flowers lie bleeding


 
























It snowed here - not much snow, an inch or two, but very cold and hard... and silent, suggesting more to come.  We're unused to this. There are no cars moving on the street, and very few pedestrians. Into the silence, the radio announces that the Pope will tweet in Latin. Cold, crazy world.

Thursday 10 January 2013

Tuesday 8 January 2013

Wordless



























It's not a question, I think, of having even less to say than before. More that none of it seems worth saying any more. Everything's about struggling for a life, and the chances right now seem about fifty-fifty. Therapy helps a bit and so does meditation. Work helps - and also doesn't. Taking photos helps, and being in the country helped a lot so  needs to happen more often. This is not a bubble of self-involvement: many people and things matter very much to me, but writing about them doesn't seem to - or else the things I'd like to write about are much too personal to someone else. And then, the long hours spent copy-editing are quite enough in the way of words; I read less too, and more discriminatingly, which is probably a good thing. And that's enough evaluation, enough reasoning. Mostly, anyway, reasoning and evaluation feel beyond me. So, still here, but very few words.

Sunday 6 January 2013

Tuesday 1 January 2013

After so much rain

Saturated, swollen land after months of rain. Pregnant with presence. Clear patches in blurred and blinking light. Something enveloping, impossible to shrink away from. Matter in transition. Photos aren't it. They're like graffiti - I was here.