up before dawn and have just read the first chapters, and am hooked ...

... then i went back to a really deep sleep for an hour and i dreamed one of those dreams that wakes you up because you know it has a "meaning" and a "message", and it reflects some deeply buried  and unfinished business from long ago ... oh. well ! you can't hope to resolve the whole of your past into neat rows of brightly coloured picture book stories with happy endings ... can you ?

postscript .... the novel narrates a series of truly horrid and gruesome events as experienced by a mixed bunch of heroin addicts whose lives intersect in bombay ... at the same time it examines the purpose and tenacity of people's so-called free will in a modern city ... the writing is transparent and i am very pleased to have encountered it ... three hurrahs !

miguel and magdalena by the old main road at lagartera

thirty years ago, just after semana santa

they lived in the middle of spain but they had seasonal jobs on the coast

they were waiting for a bus that would take them back to ? lloret de mar ? overnight

they didn't want to go, and tears had begun to fill their eyes

imtiaz dharker ... how did i not know this lady's work ?

Imtiaz Dharker
1977 (I am quite sure of this)

 The Sex Pistols in celebratory mood, 1977. Photograph: Hulton Archive

Some Glaswegians still speak of the Silver Jubilee
and the Queen's cavalcade sailing off
from George Square on a sea of Union Jacks.
Others recall that around the same time
the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen 
was black-listed by the BBC

but what I remember is
that one night I danced in spangled
hotpants, with a boy in polyester
flares (I am quite sure of this),
in time, on track, one hand in the air,
one step forward, one step back.

Time is easily tangled. It falls over its own feet.
That year peeled itself as perfectly
as the rings around Uranus.
Smallpox was eradicated, miles of fibre optics
laid, personal computers offered to the masses.
People said it had never been so good

and what I remember is
the popcorn mix at Regal Cinema,
salt over sweet, the triumph of good
over evil, light-sabres slashing the air
in synchronised time, on track,
one step forward, one step back.

People said it had never been so bad,
Bengal hit by a cyclone, snow in Miami,
New York plunged into darkness.
and out of the sky a fireball fell on Innisfree.
People said it was a sign. And that was the year
Steve Biko died.

Other people died in other years, but that year
Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin died.
Jacques Prevert and Robert Lowell died.
In Memphis, Elvis died. Still,
someone called Roy Sullivan was struck
by lightning for the seventh time
and survived

but because of the odd way time unfolds,
what I remember is the last few seconds,
the countdown under a glitterball
(I am quite sure of this),
light flashing in your eyes
and your hair as you moved
in time, on track, one hand in the air,
one step forward, one step back,

and ah, ah, ah, ah,
staying alive. Staying alive.

more nonsense

charity shop trophy ... bonnard, thames and hudson, 1984 ... a most wonderful book

post-ironic ... almost all of the navajo code talkers have gone ... and now comes the navajo app

http://navajocodetalkers.org/peter-macdonald-real-code-talker-interview/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_MacDonald_(Navajo_leader)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker#Navajo_code_talkers

http://navajotimes.com/business/2013/0913/091213keyboard.php#.VaIqtvmbyL8

http://nativeinnovation.com/dine-keyboard-app/dine-keyboard-app-for-iphone

the sun never sets over the feline empire

traditional remedies ( part 99 ) ... vigorous brushing and prolonged gargling with anis, three times a day, will remove those tell-tale traces of garlic from your breath

just out of storage, after about fifteen ? years ... here's one i knocked off during an idle moment ...

... it was cobbled together using offcuts of curved skirting boards from a factory in portslade that used to build new pub interiors ... but i abandoned it because i never could make up my mind on the final shape and wording ... the painted order of "verses" is clearly flummoxed, or do i mean bolloxed ? ... and twould be better in this order ...

F  I  R  S  T   W  I  L  L   &   T  E  S  T  A  M  E  N  T

Burn this old body now sweet life has gone,

But wait until the harvest moon comes round

Before you cast my ashes high upon

The weather beaten carpet of the downs.

Dearly beloved of the strong & tender dead,

Whilst seasons’ shadows slide around her sleeping curves,

And captive constellations flame & slowly turn,

Attentive to her enigmatic metronome,

Here, tired of juggling Death & Birth,

& resting from Creation’s Dance,

The Goddess Earth’s stone fingers play

Cat’s Cradle with our nights and days.

Abide with me sometimes among these stones my dears,

If you would understand what used to be my pain.

Lay close to Mother Earth, my loves, that you may hear

The sighing of the grasses for the Wind and Rain.

I am no longer I.

No longer wait in vain

To hear her raucous laugh

And stroke those dancing feet again.

an english man's home is his castle ... my brother dave's car shed "out the front"

street life

lea velez's recent book "el jardin de la memoria" taught me about the heroic photographer francisco boix, but i've only belatedly discovered gabriel casas and augusti centelles ...

francisco boix ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-04d60l0-EU

augusti centelles ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAGBgx0SGdY

gabriel casas ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH0pDLOjTns

lad #1

lad #2

girl power returns to barcelona

two of my favourite illustrators ... norman messenger and colin mc naughton ... from charity shops on opposite sides of whitton high street ... my, how time has flown

about agnes martin .... i've painted on grids and will do so again, so i've always had a regard for agnes martin's asceticism without the foggiest idea of where she hoped to lead me ... i think walter de la mare tried to put his finger on my kind of spiritual blindness

this next paragraph from the end of olivia laing's article in today's guardian ...


"She wanted to be buried in the garden of the Harwood Museum in Taos, near a room of paintings she had donated, but New Mexico law forbade it, and so in the spring after her death, a group assembled at midnight and scaled the adobe walls with a ladder. It was a full moon, and they dug a hole under the roots of an apricot tree, placing her ashes in a Japanese bowl lined with gold leaf before scattering them in the earth. A beautiful scene, but as Martin knew, “beauty is unattached, it’s inspiration – it’s inspiration”."



http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/22/agnes-martin-the-artist-mystic-who-disappeared-into-the-desert

http://www.annarieger.com/project/25/agnes-martinmdashpaintings-writings-remembrances/

All but blind
In his chambered hole,
Gropes for worms
The four-clawed mole.

All but blind
In the burning day,
The barn owl
Blunders on her way.

And blind as are
These three to me,
So blind to someone
I must be. 

Walter de la Mare

selfi in the glow of a rarther splendid sunset

annie oakley ... your next style icon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO23WBji_Z0

outside the seven stars at dawes green, friday lunchtime