a negative capability scrapbook
Bernard has just begun, as of today. It was very exciting, and had bubbles. As well as real live frogs.
“This is the best party-bag I’ve ever had” said secondborn on the train on the way home. And also “those weren’t the really scary sort of babies, you know.” Firstborn merely announced that his alien was better than the smiley, which is basically as good as it gets with a nearly teenager.
Neither of them has stayed six for ever and ever. Nor, I suspect, will Bernard.
Up at sparrow’s fart to drive down to Whitstable with Nina, Arun, Neha and Maizy. Nina drove, I subdued Maizy in the passenger seat and Neha in the back rose heroically to the initially alarming instruction to give Arun his bottle when he got hungry.
He’s a beautiful smiling-gurgling-laughing boy. Which is just what you need if you’re a single parent (speaking from experience).
Neha is already instructing him on the finer points of philosophy.
Maizy managed to contain her jealousy (didn’t grab his head in her jaws and drag him around the ground as she does with the cat… which was a relief.) She confined herself to locate the smelliest fish carcasses and offal and rolling in them in order to perfume the car on the return journey. We had a superb meal in the restaurant above the fish market from where we could see a fisherman mending his net
and the gravel processing plant which obscured any further the view of the sea.
Unfortunately we then had to belt back to London like shit off a shovel because of my rather urgent and complicated domestic arrangements involving three children, seven adults and four different suppers.
A package arrived today from Hong Kong bearing these wonderful stamps, but on first glance I was rather disappointed. Common magpie? little egret? scops owl? pshaw. Why send them all the way over from China when they’re available for viewing right here. The white-bellied sea-eagle is the only species not seen in the UK.
Closer inspection revealed that the owl wasn’t a European scops owl but a collared scops owl (there are, it seems, more than fifty members of the Otus family alone).
This then brought back to mind a really disturbing thought I had after admiring this picture from Mikey (and can you spot the joyfully serendipitous reason why I’m using a screenshot rather than a link?)
Wallace Stevens was not writing about my sort of blackbird. Turdus merula is not found in the States. In the new world it’s not a Turdus, it’s an Agelaius. A family with no less than 11 members. Ok, it’s not quite 13 but very nearly. Call it poetic license.
“Does it matter?” asked the friend who happened to phone up as I reached exactly this point in my musings.
Well, yes and no. Yes it matters because on an utterly visceral level I have spent decades fleshing out that highly visual poem with very clear images just like Mikey’s above. Visceral because when I realised it was the “wrong” bird inhabiting those scenes I felt a wrenching in the guts. A disillusionment almost as painful as the discovery that “unique” is not pronounced “uni-kway”.
And no, obviously it doesn’t matter. Neither a jot nor a tittle. It’s the deluded worry of an over-literal intermittently keen birdwatcher. But I confess I was relieved to find these illustrations by a fellow-countryman of the poet which show not a hint of yellow head or red shoulder interrupting the general blackness of the bird.
Poetry is the subject of the poem,
From this the poem issues andTo this returns. Between the two,
Between issue and return, there isAn absence in reality,
Things as they are. Or so we say.But are these separate? Is it
An absence for the poem, which acquiresIts true appearances there, sun’s green,
Cloud’s red, earth feeling, sky that thinks?From these it takes. Perhaps it gives,
In the universal intercourse.
Birds remade in all their blackness each time words fly from page to brain. A million million forms flocking the sky between issue and return.
(And here are some more blackbirds which flew into my inbox overnight, by Edward Picot who also curates The Hyperliterature Exchange.)
I passed through Crystal Palace Station last week on my way to Streatham Hill and was so struck by the building that I had to go back some days later to look at it properly. The picture above with its lines and curves, arches and stairs, reminds me somewhat of this picture by Escher.
The enormous cathedral-like structure with great arches and wide stairways was opened in 1854 to take what were obviously very large crowds to the relocated Crystal Palace. Its grandeur is now entirely out of scale to its importance in the railway system and it was empty and silent. It’s one of those spaces which invites whooping to test whether there is an echo. Yes, the echo is excellent.
There are two stairways (of which this is one) which are fenced off at the top and lead out, through small arches into a wide vacancy between the two remaining sets of tracks which is home to a potentially fine crop of hay. Apparently this used contain sidings and the whole area was covered between the red brick retaining walls by an elegant dual bow-spring arch iron roof. It must have looked spectacular.
One particularly endearing feature (if my presumption of purpose is correct) is the placing of a parallel handrail below those at adult height which I can only guess were designed for children to use. I can’t remember seeing such a thing anywhere else.
I went with Neha, who continues to bear my efforts to learn how to take pictures of people with great patience.
She writes poetry as well as modelling. However she wasn’t the most-photographed subject of the day. That honour has to go to Arun.
Two months old and he’s smiling, laughing, copying facial expressions like a pro (this is “oooooooh”) and generally behaving exactly as the perfect baby should. I realised that if I’m ever a grandmother I’m going to be a nightmare. I wrestled him from his mother‘s arms the moment I spotted her and only handed him back with great reluctance several hours later.
This is, as you can see, addictive. Last one for today, I promise. And btw they are supposed to be funny, not a subtle statement about incipient suicide. I think I’m usually rather blatant when I feel crap.
Click through for a bit more info about who said it first (minus the starvation of course).
Update Oh frabjousity! there’s a de-motivator flickr group.
The seriously laugh-out-loud funny sight despair.com has, amongst its pages of satirical goodness, what it calls a “Parody Motivator Generator“. Choose a picture from amongst your favourite affirming images to upload, add your title and text, fiddle with the colours and total dissatisfaction can, and often does, ensue.
Go to their gallery of delightful demotivational products for some disinspiration. I particularly enjoy despair, dysfunction and loneliness. And don’t forget to check out who the manufacturers suggest each poster is particularly suited to. Most impressive in this regard is consulting with its clever alternating urls for the first link (must find out how that’s done). And whatever you do don’t click that second link. No, don’t. Really.
My poster is another version of the phrase used in their adversity poster. The original Nietzschean nonsense has always annoyed me.
There’s a new look. You might not be able to see it until you press the shift key and click on refresh button in the browser.
That better? or not? Please tell me what you think – colours, layout, design, accessibility etc.
My own thought is that the banner picture is too big for small screens; I want the whole bang-shoot to be centred in a web page rather than stuck to the left hand side; I want lovely Alan Johnston to move down slightly so he’s in line with the top picture to the right (or the pictures to move up); the borders around images could be thinner and I want the odd spacing between the divided column and the single column in the sidebar to be evened out.
There are still some things to be done here and there, links pages and about page to be updated etc, but otherwise I’m rather pleased with the overall effect. It’s a modified version of the Leia theme designed by Kapikua. As you’ll be able to see if you visit either of those links, the original language is Spanish which made things slightly surreal since I don’t speak a word but ultimately I suppose it doesn’t matter what something is called as long as it’s spelt consistently across the site.
About How We Are Now
For the first time, Tate is inviting members of the public to contribute to the content of an exhibition.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
How We Are: Photographing Britain (Tate Britain, 22 May — 2 September 2007) takes a unique look at the journey of British photography, from the pioneers of the early medium to today’s photographers who use new technology to make and display their imagery. To demonstrate the evolving nature of photography in the twenty-first century, Flickr photographs will be featured in the exhibition.SUBMITTING YOUR PHOTOGRAPH
To submit a photograph to the exhibition, simply join this group and contribute your photograph anytime until 25 July 2007.
See the link above for more information.
I hope this is just the beginning of many collaborative cultural projects using social software to integrate (potentially) global virtual contributions into a physical exhibition space.
I like the way too there is the less-moderated element of the flickr group and then the smaller curated sample from that volunteered pool.
Now, what to submit?
Only now he’s ZMJEZHD which is even more difficult to pronounce.
How I do love the league of language learneds.
frizzyLogic 