barefooting 2

A great day at Barefoot Doctors - I started feeling pretty ropey - stiff hands and knees - but after a warm-up and some movement - a great exercise where a small group of us had to move as a single organism - a flowing sophisticated follow-my-leader - I loved it despite the painful joints and fatigue.

We pretty quickly moved on to the the main purpose of the remainder of the summer school, which is to collaborate in producing a short performance piece based on the idea of standstill - a notional point around the winter solstice, when days change from getting shorter to growing longer.

So many ideas to play with - the stress and rush of xmas, rebirth, the passage of time, the opposition of light and dark, day and night, activity and torpor.

I'm asked to work with Anwyl and Jo supported by Susan - and this turns out to be a really sparky combination - loads of ideas which we are now busying ourselves with turning into a performance for our colleagues. I find this kind of collaboration energising, but have to restrain myself from jamming in too many ideas - I make myself listen, and of course its worth it. I really enjoy working with A, J and S.

Lots of stuff to do tonight getting things together - printing, words, kit, blah, blah.

By the end of the day I was feeling much better than in the morning - tired but energised and pain pretty much in the background.

Roll on tomorrow...

some bits from my old blog...

I discovered a new(?) feature in Blogger which allows you to move posts from one blog to another. That's what I've done - I've selected around a dozenposts from my old blog - mostly ones featuring poems and photographs - the earliest dates from 2005....

I'm astounded that I've been blogging that long.

naked from the ankles down

This is the first post of a new blog which will be about my practice as a photographer and community / participatory artist.

I have blogged before - http://blueshawkblog.blogspot.com/ - but it is some months since I posted - mostly because I ran out of things I wanted to say about having RA, which became the primary theme of blueshawkblog.

So this a new start - and I aim to be less random than previously - although, as with many of my aims I may diverge from my original purpose - at the age of 60 (nearly) I have to accept that about myself.

This new start has been triggered by going on the Barefoot Doctors summer school - today has been the first day, after which I'm pretty knackered, but pretty happy. And that is about as analytical or reflective I'm going to be at the mo' - I need to lurk on the sofa watching TV (not James Bond).

breathless

Air moves in a mysterious way

its wonders to perform

invisible, divisible, irresistible

insensate blast, engine of all.

Born in the borderland between sea and sky,

falls on land, and brick by brick by brick

reduces ash to ashes, dust to dusts.

Parent to the form of trees.

Shaking, shaping limbs in rage,

bending the child to your whim.

high on heaths in violence abounding

maddening the maddened, making madder, mad kings,

fooling fools and blinding the blind;

whilst lowly heathers and bilberries lie low

sifting and dividing to nothing your every notion.

We hold your madness near, erect barriers -

stone, wood, glass, metal;

catch cubed power, the better to live

in the footsteps of salt men

who, driven before you on lines between life and death,

end: reduced to leather and bones.

Strangely attracted to chaotic turbulence

you (eddy to your friends) whistle up your fluid familiar,

ring-leader in wanton ruin,

gang-leader on the coastal chain,

breaking rock

stones

pebbles

gravel

sand

silt

mud

slime

Everything.

Calanais

From some fathomless place in a yawning sky
the lark falls soft, loft on salty breath
(its song-of-place a sharp decline)
to be an unkempt bundle,
post-bound & mundane.

Purpose runs deep
in the bird
in the land
in the standing stones,
old as any named for their place.

here on an edge,
the stones’ cipher, cracked by birdsong,
unbroken remains.

british winter-time two – Lakeland

rain glosses a jackdaw’s bill
against the promise of a cold bright day
..........................
cloud spills through wintergreen wands
the landscape’s spectral magicians
conjuring crags and fells
we deny all magic but draw sharp breath
at the effortless skill of air
and applaud moisture’s motion
that draws modest veils only to strip the bracken-rusted bank
.............................
pan left, and water rushing to escape ragging rocks
flings itself into space
divides, and divides again and again to multiply the mere
lost tarns mirror blackthorn ashamed of un-named mist
...............................
in the distance the air gathers its breath
and exhales to exalt the jackdaw and split a graveyard yew

work in progress...

Sad, soft, saturated light seeps into Sunday’s corners, and heaps greyness like slush
I ache for snow to overwhelm the sound of improbable traffic
And give way to a deluge of feeling -
Some women long for longed-for babies, tears overflowing; sing songs, make hay, right wrongs
Some men search for words; grasp at songs long unsung; recline, descend into memory without recall, documenting decline
We all make do and mend, do the do-able, try to lead while laughing - dancing out of control
This starts, that ends
Meanwhile I digest poison, it calms me as I listen for news of death, and wait on news of life
I want for nothing but comfort and comforting
Life then, like lava, hot and unstoppable, carrying, charring, hardening, just to hear the sound of cracking rock and falling ash