woobiquity

The resilience of weeds

Two days ago while sitting in my back garden (ahem) working, I reached over and idly tugged at a weed that had grown up out of a crack in the wall. I didn't manage to pull its roots out, but my tugging left the thing standing straight out at an almost-right angle, like a sore thumb.

This afternoon I found that the weed had righted itself, or half of itself, positioning its buds back where they needed to be to get their necessary bask of sunlight.

If there's a deeper truth or wisdom in this, I don't pretend to know what it is. I just thought it was interesting. The heavenly glow around the open bloom, by the way, is a quirk of my camera phone, not any kind of blessing.

'A Color of the Sky'

From 3QuarksDaily, a poem by Tony Hoagland that begins:

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,

driving over the hills from work.

There are the dark parts on the road

                     when you pass through clumps of wood

and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,

but that doesn’t make the road an allegory. 

Continue reading 'A Color of the Sky'

It goes on to be a poem about the discomforts and sexuality of springtime. Though really it's a poem about the discomforts and sexuality of life. Which is appropriate, considering this poem appeared in a collection called (wonderful title) 'What Narcissism Means to Me'. Do I need to add that it is also a poem laced with allegory? Snicker, snicker.

Photo: the sky above where I live, taken about this time last year.

Blackbird in the branches at dawn

Not quite Wildlife Photographer of the Year material (I lack the necessary equipment), but a nice thing to see out the window first thing on a snowy London Monday. The title is misleading, but also true, since under snowclouds dawn stretches right through to dusk.

(Lots more London snow photos here.)

Mannah from heaven?

Not likely. But a large bread roll has just fallen out of the sky. It happened just as I passed the kitchen window, fell as quickly as an oversize snowflake, bounced, nested against a mossy brick. I'd only come downstairs to make a cup of tea. Now I faced a metaphysical puzzle. Joan next door, who has recently taken to walking with a cane, could, I supposed, have gotten overzealous with her bird feeding. But lobbing anything at that angle, over two roofs, would have taken a miracle of strength at any age. What then? Dissatisfied airline passenger? Some new post-graffiti expression of youth?

The squirrel that scrambled along to retrieve his fumbled lunch didn't look like he needed it much. His body ballooned like he'd already swallowed a bread role whole. The way he preened with this one between his teeth, atop the fence post, on the high branch of the apple tree, it seemed just the trophy he needed.

Art imitating life?

The people of Appalachia got a lot of bad press during the election campaign (or good press, I guess, if you were an ardent John McCain supporter -- was there such a thing?). Gary Younge's reportorial embed in Roanoke, Virginia, gave us a more nuanced look, but it swam against a tide of stereotype and outlandish hate, some real, some imagined.

So here's something to round out the picture a  little bit. 

The new Taubman Museum of Art has opened in Roanoke, a little city once known as The Big Lick, because it was where mountain people from miles around came to buy their salt. Now the city is home to an art museum designed by a fancy Los Angeles architecture firm, with Gehry-like swoops and gravity-defying curves, built from Appalachian materials. 

If art really does imitate life, what does this say about the people of western Virginia?

The shape of things to come

Dry leaves in a drainage grate, near Marylebone Road, London, Thursday.

The politics of darkness

No wonder we crave an entertainment like “The Dark Knight,” where every topic we’re unable to quit not-thinking about is whirled into a cognitively dissonant milkshake of rage, fear and, finally, absolving confusion.

-Jonathan Lethem, who, like me, finally got around to watching the movie of the summer, and saw nothing in it but the autumn of our times.

Photographing 'Desire'

The lens of my Panasonic Lumix has been getting a lot of action since I arrived in New Orleans.

Mainly I've snapped areas of the city that were not so much physically as emotionally scarred by the storm. These are the areas that are walkable and have the paint-left-to-dry-and-crack qualities and forgotten typefaces that I'm most interested in. Before Katrina they were the most interesting areas of the city by far. Maybe a marker of the city's revival will be when they are the most remarkable areas yet again. Though that day may yet be a long way off.

Anyway, photostream here.

Mad cows and Englishmen

go out in the midday fog? Wait, that's not right, is it. After all, we were in Wales, not England. But the village of Hay-on-Wye did feel a lot like London-on-Seed last week, as thousands converged there for the mud-splattered literary event of the season, the Hay Festival. Who knew so many literate, Guardian-reading urbanites owned wellies. (Update: London beer garden retort: of course they do; what else would they wear when tending to their allotments?!)

 

 

Top to bottom: three shots of the front window at Mad Old Cow, a delightfully, madly eccentric shop/tea-garden/one-room-B&B (the room is part Wild West, part Alice in Wonderland, and you'll wake to the disorienting sound of strangers' teacups clinking right outside your window) in the centre of Hay; books books books; the fog on the farm at Vowchurch.

And finally, from this year's festival T-shirts and paraphernalia: "Hay-on-Wye... What's that, some kind of sandwich?" -- Arthur Miller

April snows bring May roses?

Not that today's London snow can be blamed directly on global warming or anything (or the Chinese and their weather control program for that matter), but this seems as relevant a moment as any to note that our dearest seasonal cliches could lose all context within our lifetime.

Mind you, this one may never have been true to begin with. Don't you feel safer knowing that in this age of boundless content generation somebody has taken the time to abuse us of such a dangerous assumption? Whew.

Snow bed, Greenwich, this afternoon.