swarm

How they circle up from the inside,

We marvel at their persistence.

From deep in the belly right up into the throat,

We can't help but notice

their determination

as they swarm higher into the mouth.

And from the other side of the window,

we nod in admiration.

How we gaze in wonder

as the window pane shifts in and out of sight

melts over the top of us and sticks in gluey mess

sucks through us and then leaves us alone

back in place.

We're not sure which side we're on.

Us on the inside and them on the outside.

Us on the inside and them on the inside.

And how to go on now.

How we marvel

at their persistence.

How we wait

for guidance.

Perhaps we'll let them in,

let them take over a while.

And we can rest down here,

away from all the activity

up there.

We can rest down here a while

push/release

I'm not totally sure what this woman is doing, but she became like this gradually and it seemed clear that this was how she had to be.

Stretch

I knew I was going to draw a figure in something like this position, but in my imagination it was a mournful female figure, head and shoulders slumped forward in a dejected way, out of in energy after feeling distraught. But somehow this man grew, stretching upwards. To me he seems relaxed but also purposeful, because he's present in his body as he stretches it out. Lisa says I drew someone reaching up to new heights of understanding and acceptance. I like this interpretation.

Recently I've been watching shadows.
It's not that they were moving,
except when someone

out of my field of focus

moved around

or changed the lights.
But it wasn't so much that.

It's that the intricacy of the shapes,

the angles,

the repetitions,

the angles,

the echoes,
they all demand such close attention.
The people all seem so intent on each other.
On their faces, their bodies, the objects attached to them.
But in this field of focus,

inside the beauty of shifing light and dark and colours and lines,
the objects disappear into planes of patterns.
And the shadows
draw you in.

Rose

I hadn't thought about the heaviness of soil before. It seemed that a big flower pot full of it was more awkward than I had made allowance for when planning to transport a rose to my mother's house. You could tuck it under one arm best, with both hands clasped underneath. I had it in a thick paper bag with cord handles, from a clothes shop, and just a few of the newly-sprouted leaves poked out of the top so that the passers-by on my walk to the train station took a furtive sideways look with an almost imperceptible raising of the head to get a better angle on whatever could be in there.

In a way, I wanted them to realise it was a plant inside. I do sometimes revel in being a little bit unconventional, and carrying a plant pot through the streets was therefore quite appealing. But then, I do also get a bit held back by self-consciousness; I could never be post-conventional. So I suppose I also wanted the plant to be seen because if there wasn't an unusual object inside the bag, then I was carrying it in what was almost certainly a socially abnormal way for no apparent reason. I was making absolutely no use of the handles. In fact, I also carry in this fashion when a bag is heavy on account of being full of books from the University Library, but then the bag is usually made of clear plastic to make sure that we don't try and steal any, which circumvents the visibility problem.

I had set off a little early in order to be able to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee on the station's platform before getting on the train. I'm not sure why the platform was part of the coffee equation rather than my seat on the train, but the contrast between crisp-air-on-cheeks and hot-coffee-on-lips when I did drink seemed to congratulate me on the choice. The other people on my bench were early too, and so we all sat together in silence for about ten minutes, during which time the rush of people crossing in front of us to and from trains seemed like a pressure wave pushing us back into a little corner of intimacy. It seemed a bit like we were having a very personal conversation as we looked out at the people intently from our bench with our hot drinks. They all had the opposite idea about their drinks. They all held them in front of them as they marched ahead, leaning slightly forwards from the waist. I began to suspect the drinks were actually pulling them forwards, what with the way they clutched onto them so tightly, and how they seemed so very serious about their train-catching task. What a disaster it would be if they were to drop it. Undoubtedly they would stand entirely still and look at all the trains in total bemusement. Perhaps then they would notice the bench and decide it would be nice to have a little sit down.

As I put down the rose bag on the third train of my cross-country route, the bag broke. I folded it and placed it on the table top as a mat for the pot so as not to spread the soil everywhere. Now everyone was able to admire the rose, and when finally I arrived, I carried it out in front of me to my mother who was waiting on the platform.

down and up

In a narrow street in Cambridge there is a hole in the tarmac in the shape of an elongated heart. Around the corner, when the light fades from the sky the sundial high up on the church wall tells the time of the orange lampposts' night. Sometimes I look down and sometimes up.

Recently I have been using my old inline rollerblades to get from A to a range of other letters, and so now the pavement has a new meaning. Now I feel the down. The pavement has more texture than it did when I was just shoe soles and bicycle wheels.

It is incredibly smooth and I weave between the walking people without ever needing air to come between my wheels and the ground, only elements of the figure eight. And then it is slightly less glass-like, it is the sandstone paving stones, and the sound comes out in a strange wavering tone that sounds like ghosts are underneath. But then there are older paving stones with the deep cracks between, and if the weight is too far forwards you will trip, so you must sink back a little. You will never flow here, and the precision of where the next pushing step must fall absorbs everything. At the special paving stones made of little bobbles that tell the pedestrians where they should line up to cross the road, if you hold your wheels in a very straight line for a while you can slip exactly between the bumps that otherwise would judder and jar through your legs and right up your back. Cobbled streets are obviously out of bounds. Then there is the road. Sometimes the road is so rough that the wheels cannot move with any pace and need constant, vigorous encouragement, even though your tremor-ridden legs ache for the glassy surface to come back.

Sometimes I look at my feet and sometimes at the sky. Now I feel with my feet. I want to feel the sky.

Run

Mother moved house. She moved when I wasn't there, but I've seen it now. We had Christmas there last year and that was the point at which it became a family house. We all helped to keep the fire lit, and the complex procedure of Christmas dinner was kept in check by a thorough list detailing the time-before-take-off of each person's part.
Mother's house has hills and woods now. I tried running through them last time I was there. At first there was a stream making enough noise to keep the footfall on leaves into a delicate but slightly frantic pattern. But then there were only woods and fields and all the focus settled on the ups and downs of the hill path so that the head felt it was ploughing through the softly muddy ground. I let the feet tumble down and down till we reached the road. The carving had already been done there. But then there were the lorries passing from behind with their invisible drivers, passing at such regular intermittence that in the quiet spells you could feel in your skin the next one growing in the distance behind until it was big enough to take its place in the air it would push past you.
The next day I ran in the other direction. I ran alongside a canal, and although it didn't have the rush of the stream, its quiet, steady companionship was more than enough. Sometimes the land at the side rose up or fell away, and sometimes a bridge wanted everyone to cross to the other side, but the path and the water stayed at the same level the whole time so that the feet and the eyes could go their separate ways. At times they were miles apart. At a certain point there was a tunnel. It wasn't that anything about the path changed. It was just that the land closed overhead so that the water on the ground glistened black and the thin splashes they made shot back from the roof to accentuate the tentativity of the feet. Once I was through the tunnel there didn't seem to be any point in continuing further so, a little more confidently this time, I plunged back into the darkness and ran home.