gossamer thread

Wednesday, 14 October 2009

sand painting from the ukraine

history art politics

Tuesday, 4 August 2009

Yawning through life

You’re yawning at ten in the morning on the metro
Is this where you wanted life to lead you?
A relaxed lifestyle which tempted you in a glossy magazine over last nights T.V dinner and efficiency reports
Cooled by the sterile flicker of the screen you contemplate your life’s nine to fiveness

CLOSE

If you let me take you by the hand i'll lead you through the trees, we'll see what we can an' if the clouds come over we'll find ourselves a little shelter. It'll pass; i'll whisper in your ear how i really mean it and you'll smile an' shrug you don't know whether to take me serious or whether I'm just playing again. we can stand now -it's raining and i reckon I'm crying and you don't notice. we look into each others eyes and what we see reflected surprises us. Surprises us so much.

A Normal Person?

Is grey
with touches of colour
suppressed but happy
smiles when not worried
Loves to be loved, has to love
Tastes what he’s fed
Digests what he’s told
Lives the day around the future
Forgets the past in context of priority.

IMPORT

There was just a spot of dried blood, on the inside clip of the gloss plastic and polystyrene computer package imported from China. 'Apple'.
It said 'Apple' on the cover. 'Apple'. It was slick. Very, very slick. Brush titimum alloy or something like that, real tough and good looking. Smart too, sharp, tough, good-looking; compact and on and off when I want.
There was a blood red spot, claret on the white squeaky 'styrene package. Apple. Mmmmm. Power Book G4. made in China.
Chinese hands, small proably? Quite small, probably? A kids possibly.

amr 2004-07-06

Morning Light

Nobody had really noticed the old man.
He sat in the entrance of his small hut on the riverbank
He contemplated his eight large weeping willows.

His small world was full of ironies, clues here and there- pointers, reminders to himself and to others. Who was she? Why had she died? Who cared?

Everyday he planted a small flower. Sometimes a bunch.
Soon there would be little space on his small island.

It was nearing eleven, the sun warmed his face and hands.

The old man re-entered his hut, carefully washed his hands in a cold pewter bowl of water and scrubbed them dry with a rough towel. He hung the towel and cut himself two slices of rye bread.

Placing the knife in a small basket at his feet, careful not to cut himself on the sharp serrated blade, he took out a pat of butter wrapped in grease-proof paper. He also found a worn but clean butter knife wrapped in a cloth napkin.

Taking a small plate from a rack of three above the wash-basin the man spread a thin layer of butter on each slice.

In the centre of the hut stood a small square table. There were only two wooden chairs.

Today the sun shone through the hut's entrance illuminating the small tabletop.

Milos sat in the chair facing the hut's exit. He placed the bread before him. To his left stood a samovar from which he poured a precious cup of black tea. Reaching down to the basket below he withdrew a glass container the size of a shot glass. It had an airtight lid with a metal fastener and rubber seal. He opened the container and let the contents breathe.

He watched his small flat-bottomed wooden rowing boat tethered to a near tree as it gently bobbed up and down on the sighing river.

Milos pinched a little salt onto his bread before eating.

Together

(Refugees)
and the colour, the pain as he held her and she he,
And he the child
Feel the pulse, the beat- the pulse the beat.
Warmth, hold, stay for warmth-together, forever

Correspondent

After so many years peering through the lens he’d seen too many things.
Men drop from the air with ‘chutes like so many jellyfish
Clothes worn by the dead stained claret red
Boys with bombs raise villages
Women weeping while children sleeping awake daddyless
Eyes cloded by tears as the years glock by
A shot fired from his 35mm to a distant desk.

Numbed by 2000

Numbed to thought, to think, or to try

Regardless of love, of sentiment, taste or touch

A bloody grey mash of thoughts

electrified only by intermittent jolts of

recognition

Finding Time for Ourselves

Running so fast I see little

All is blurred-now.

Feel the rumble of the train but not the train, see the faces but not the people, hear the sound but not the song.

You see me but I don't see you

No time to think, living back to back with myselfish ways.

I don't see you, I don't feel me- anymore.

I felt close, once.

I felt something once.

Now I'm jarred, I'm numbed, my reactions pre-programmed, my actions-reactions.

Barcelona -end

People make Mistakes

People make mistakes; people aren’t perfect, life isn’t simple, I don’t have a daily rhythm, a slot to fit into- a way to think, a path to follow, things aren’t in control destiny not pre-determined.

People cry. Kill, are sad and happy, very sad and very happy. People drink and get drunk, people get angry and fight. People live and are led, people are in and out of control people lie and are lied to, people steal and are stolen from, people die and are born and people die in childbirth and in childhood; men and women have sex they make love and they rape and are raped.

Life is cast in a chaotic role, we people it and fight it, nature takes its course and, at times, takes from us. Destroys things we built and kills people we love, we fight it and control much of its humbling influence.

I love this life, I am not numb, I don't believe in all of it. I don't want to chase the ace because the ace is just got higher and I'd rather not waste my time in pursuit of the unattainable, like a dog after a hare on a track, I'd rather not waste my the time on the bend, in the blind chase not sensitive to the beauty of the journey. I'd prefer to be a lost child at wonder with the world than a crazed adult stretching all to try and control the world. I like to look and to discover, I like to wonder what if…, I like to try but to enjoy trying.

NOWHERE

To arrive where I taught was to arrive nowhere. Or perhaps I’m lying. Somewhere to someone. Somewhere cold, somewhere hard. Somewhere on a bus route out of Prague.
It was cold and it was winter, my destination, or rather the suburban scrub surrounding it, was snow dusted and occupied I was to discover by a grubby dark tire factory and a communist grey light bulb factory.
It was to be my first day teaching sports equipment suppliers. Originally a company from Finland they’d ‘outsourced’ to the Czech Republic where they’d found the white collar labour cheaper and where they’d soon found or built pre-fabricated office units on the outskirts of the capital. Although back in Prague your average tourist was catered for in just about any culinary and luxuary aspect out here the clock was back a good six years . The kind of place where even if you had the money there was nothing to buy, congealed meat , drinks where flavour is expensive and therefore guarded – you order a coffee and it’s always weak.
Once off the bus I checked my map against my bearings and destination. It seemed I was on a good road to nowhere interrupted intermittently by street lamps. I began my trek past the odd single story house with barking dog. The snow thickened as I walked further and my feet froze. I was still keeping up appearances. Underneath my ‘overcoat’ I wore my jacket shirt and tie, I was also in my little leather office shoes. As I reached the bottom of the road, further and apparently further from civilization I smelt burning rubber and then soon made out a mass of burnt black and rust red hulking buildings the view of which was broken from time to time by the hulking rolling bulk of creaking and grinding Tatra trucks. Men peered out at me from work and weather bruised faces, to think that they contemplated me with anything more than indifference would have been vanity.
All the same seeing them affirmed the simple fact that I was well away from work so I tried to head to the centre of this industrial post-communist surburbia.
Once back on the road I asked a woman hunched over her child if there was a pub or a bar or café anywhere. “Here?” and a look of disbelief were her only reposes. I still had over an hour before the lesson and it was numbingly cold, there had to be somewhere.
I could see from where I was that lower down there was some form of dividing line. ‘Lower cold land’ looked slightly more developed than ‘Upper cold land’.

written during my time in Prague 2003-4