All the Daves

I’ve been concentrating on my words recently so here’s some about climbing. No Daves were damaged in the creation of this piece.

Finding the way

I found this poem on the back of some writing paper while sorting out stuff to live in the shed. I can only assume I wrote it, as usually I’m better at copying than this. I don’t remember doing so. I expect I composed it a few years ago when I was feeling particularly rudderless.

How could you find a way without a map,
Without a compass and those legs to count the miles?
You could learn to use the sextant,
And hold that fat warm barometer in your hand,
Stand with your legs braced on the heeling deck and read the sun at noon.

How could you find your way without a map?
Storm tossed, running before winds and tides,
Out of sight of land – of breaking waves,
Unannounced shoals, skerries, lagoons.
To float on that unforgiving night time sea
With stars unread, or cloudy moonless skies.

How could you find your way without a map
And having the map find, roads, trade winds; and a destination.

 

MER

Trouble with words

Sorry. This is late because I do have trouble with words but I like to disguise it in my writing and also because my back took longer to recover than I had hoped:-

This last week i managed to temporarily cripple myself with my work practice and a very soft bed. Both things are being fixed but I haven’t done as much paper work as i would like.

Today i wanted to talk about words.

the journey is the destination 22/11/13

Surbition

This week i have mainly been looking at Art, (this of course is a pretty lie.) and as i write I’m on my way to the south coast to look at some more. Finally I’m going to see the trees i mentioned in this post.

Substance – all about noticing

To make ( art or craft – I hope you have all be listening to Greyson Perry’s Reith Lectures) is to take notice.
This week I wanted to talk about one of the modules of my BA (weave) from Farnham. It was all about taking notice. Paying attention to things that might otherwise have gone unreguarded. Substance, in the world of weave, refers to the feel of a fabric: its drape, its weight, its texture. In fabric design, we chose the yarn, the intersection and the finish. All these things go to make up a fabric’s substance. Colour and visual pattern is less than incidental, despite the apparent importance this has in most decisions about fabric choice in the very day*.

Trees in Art

I’m sitting in Green Park (as I write this), it’s 20:30 and I’m just about to have an M&S sandwich for supper. It’s times like this I realize just how sheltered my life is…
In amongst all the French revolutionary politics and nature writing in Waterstones Picadilli I came across a book – Under the Green Wood – Picturing the British Tree From Constable to Kurt Jackson. [There’s an exhibition too.] It was the cover that sold it to me and of course it had to come home with me.

Vanitas

She looked down at the tiny boxwood woman, with her eyes demurely lowered, gazing at her hands resting lightly on her withered thighs. There was a marvel there, that you could still sense the strength of her beauty in this representation of that time worn body. She heard movement beside her and took it as frustration, perhaps boredom overcoming politeness. Was he happy to move on, for his revelation to to continue? She could stare into this cabinet for hours moving slowly from one miniature to the next, appreciating the care, the artistry even if now she could only intellectually comprehend the intent.

She had come here with hope.