odd things in the chinese landscapes

james cowie

wife number one

wife number two

i wonder if he kept a diary ?

3BT

as the underground train pulls out of a sun-drenched overground parsons green station, the buxom girl  dressed in purple on the opposite platform is reaching in through her tight fitting decolletage to spray something in to her armpit

looking up at the vibrant stained glass above a small fountain in the turkish tiled hall  at lord leighton's house

this year's white birch bark, as yet unpeeled

air traffic control

we live close to the approach path of heathrow airport ... my work takes me close to the airport at gatwick ... i've become fascinated by the precise control and organization of aircraft movements in the small space between them ... i've only just realized how much air traffic is in motion across the globe ... this website led me there ...

https://www.flightradar24.com/9.08,-0.92/2 ...

it is a seamless real time monitor that you can zoom in to and you can identify individual flights, following their course and progress

there is a long article on air traffic control in wikipedia that deals with the complexities and challenges of the various systems in use around the world, and their integration protocols

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_traffic_control

our local air traffic control is under the supervision of NATS and their mapping of the system is an eye-opener for me

http://www.nats-uk.ead-it.com/public/index.php%3Foption=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=93&Itemid=142.html

their mapping and documentation is a model of clarity ... as far as a layman can tell ... for example ...

http://www.ead.eurocontrol.int/eadbasic/pamslight-2A08D280A7AC5FD7E966180857238322/7FE5QZZF3FXUS/EN/Charts/AD/AIRAC/EG_AD_2_EGKK_2-2_en_2017-03-30.pdf

at gatwick it is interesting to see the "double-decker" A380 come and go, and lately i've been reading a blog by a man who sits in the flight deck of one such ... he's just written a short article about airport ground control etiquette and about the larger issue of the future of air traffic control ...

https://a380flightdeck.tumblr.com/post/160981405075/air-traffic-control-system-desperately-needs

a little light reading ... the harrow and wealdstone rail crash

... to be continued

gilbert and george ... i can't explain their appeal ... occasionally i've thought some of their stuff was deeply offensive ... their prurient interest in young men repels me ... but mostly i'm astonished by their stylistic coherence and delighted by their casual belligerence ... and i happen to think that they say what they want much more clearly than my other hero tom denny, which begs the question ... "when will the church commission a design from gilbert and george ?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_%26_George

http://www.gilbertandgeorge.co.uk/

more images to be added ...

grayson perry ... maps

the spell by margaret barnard

i was intrigued ... the picture isn't famous ... it is owned by a gallery in rye but was not displayed when i visited ... i hadn't known the stories and the poem and the various mythical belief systems ... but somehow it demanded attention, and interpretation ... there had to be some narrative ... it didn't take too long to discover the outline, but i wish the artist had left us some memoir of its creation ...

margaret barnard had lived in southern italy so the landscape might well be one that she knew ...

you'll have to read the linked articles to begin to understand the picture's content ...

http://www.blackcatpoems.com/t/the_sorceress.html

http://www.theoi.com/Text/TheocritusIdylls1.html

http://www.witchcraftmag.us/ghosts/simaetha-and-her-tradition.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecate

http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Hekate.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/29/poem-of-the-week-theocritus-villanelle-oscar-wilde

http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/hekate.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/review-of-ancient-greek-love-magic-120519

https://www.ryeartgallery.co.uk/collection-artists/109/margaret-helen-barnard

hekate's identity and myth is fairly fluid ... evolving and changing in different mediterranean cultures ... so it isn't easy for me the novice to interpret the picture's details

i need to find an informed interpreter ... maybe marina warner can point the way ...


That which distinguishes Theocritus from all other Poets, both Greek and Latin, and which raises him even above Virgil in his Eclogues, is the inimitable tenderness of his passions, and the natural expression of them in words so becoming of a Pastoral.

• John Dryden,     Preface to   Sylvae   (1685)