Do the Thing

Been going through the usual downturn of an artist.

"Am I wasting my time? Am I making the right choices? Shouldn't I be focusing on "x" or "y"? Time is running out! What am I doing with my life? Why am I bothering? Failure. Failure. Failure.

Sound familiar?

Whether you actively identify as an artist of some form. Or "imaginist" as I like to call myself. Or maybe you have another term entirely. Or you are just someone who daydreams and dreams under the stars and in moonlight on porches and on the hood of a car or the edge of your desk, you've probaby had a similar sort of running commentary of doubt.

I kicked myself over to England because I felt like I wasn't doing anything with my life. Now I am doing many things. Every day, every evening, every second I am experiencing so much I barely have time to process it all, let alone devote time to creating art.

Like the glorious month I had last February, house sitting for some relations in their nearly "middle-of-nowhere" house, in the middle of winter. I got some of the best writing done that I have ever managed.

Except life can't always be hiding away in seclusion. Certain life choices mean you need to make money to live. Certain life choices mean you have things you require to be sane, even if they aren't things that you need to survive. Though some people choose to just stick to flat survival in the name of The Art. Some people manage to balance everything. Some people flounder and flutter. Scared. Worried. Focused on practicality.

Some people just grab the milk carton. Stand on it and ask.

Recently I had the pleasure of not only meeting an individual who's music and art I have long admired but I also got around to reading her memoir (read over two days, it was that engaging).

Her name is Amanda Palmer.

I won't be surprised if you wonder: Who?

She's a bit of a cult figure. And yet she is one of the most human, human being I have ever met. Wise, honest, witty, and just wanting share the joy of music with other human beings.

This is one of her songs:

And this is her TED talk. The Art of Asking:

She draws on her eyebrows to make people unconsciously look her in the eye because it is through the eyes that people connect.

It is through the eyes that people see eachother.

And in a society that is far too open about looking, we don't really see anyone.

She endeavours to empathise and get into the perspectives of all individuals, whether they are on the right or wrong side of morality or law. Because we are all human at heart.

She is often critised as being too showy and trustworthy, as breaking all boundaries of what is "right" in the music industry by allowing fans to download for free.

She does this because the only way to build a connection is by making yourself vulnerable, by being 100% honest. When that connection is built you don't have to force anyone to do anything.

Most likely they will want to do it.

First though, you need to connect.

Second though, you need to ask.

That requires vulnerability.

And through it all you need the bravery to just do the Thing. Because you want to. Not because you have to or you should.

I've long been wanting to publish a novel. And I do. Want to publish a novel, that is. Except there is much more I also want to do.

After reading Amanda's book I sat back and thought. Why haven't I published the novel yet? I came up with this:

I am afraid no one will read it because no one has yet seemed to read what I do already.

Then again, I haven't shared much of my writing yet. I did have someone read part of my novel-in-progress recently and they laughed in many parts. Just as I had hoped as I wrote it.

That made me happy.

Art isn't about being able to live off of it. Yes that would be lovely but really, art is about sharing a moment with other people. It is about sharing stories around a campfire. Like humanity has done for millenia. Albeit in different formats.

I am going to start sharing more. I am going to keep writing and photographing more. Maybe one day people will laugh, smile, cry and cheer over this art from my heart. Until then...

I have re-started my tumblr which you can find at: alyssaimaginist.tumblr.com

On that platform I intend on sharing my photostories since it is more friendly to photography and here I will continue my life musings and travel blogging. The novel is going to be a work in progress for a while and who knows what I'll come out with next. The good thing about being an imaginist is that I always have ideas for new works. I'm going to be as busy as ever. I live in London. I'm going to build experiences the size of the Great Wall of China thank you very much. And hopefully you'll stick around for the ride. If you're a twitterer do check me out on @TheMoonyDreamer where shorter bits of inspiration, and links to much more creativity are generally found. 

All that I ask is that you enjoy my work, comment when you have the time and share with others if you have a moment.

That is the point of art after all. It brings us together. It reminds us what being human is about; deep down, all we want is to be seen from the inside.

We are all bigger on the inside. Like the Tardis. So don't be afraid. Do the Things. Because you can. Not because anyone says you can or anyone watches. Dance like no one watches. Dance like the world is within you. Or in the words of Amanda Palmer's other brilliant half, Neil Gaiman: "Make good art."

Moony.

A Road Trip in Brains: Drabble

Did you know that mayonnaise is 5% milk?

Did you know that everyone has a unique tongueprint, as they do with fingerprints?

Did you know that the northern leopard frog swallows its prey using its eyes? (It uses them to help push food down its throat by retracting them into its head).

Did you know that Vladimir Nabokov nearly invented the smiley?

Did you know that there are 274 different types of dust?

Did you know that bacteria lives in hairspray and in 2008 a new one was discovered?

Did you know that there are around 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body? (If you took them all out and laid them end to end, they’d stretch around the world more than twice).

Did you know that there are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on every beach in the world? 

As the road stretched out ahead. Deep into the peat moss mire and moors of Connemara, twenty seven brains on a bus ramble down their own lanes.

Some of it was true. Some of it was not. Mostly though, the thoughts were much of nothing. Though that's just a limitation of the English language. Nothing is impossible to quantify. So what is all of this. Really?

I'm bored. When are we going to arrive. Is this even worth it? I'm hot. I can't sleep. I'm tired. This bus is rocky. Look a sheep! Those mountains are gorgeous. I have so much work to do. This is the middle of nowhere. I wonder what Jeremy is doing? Yellow car! What am I going to do tomorrow? I want a chocolate muffin. Should I have a muffin? This is a holiday. Nine-hundred and ninety-nine stars in the sky, the sun is burning. What do I have to do when I get back? Pretty stream. Where are my sunglasses? It's so hot.

On wanders the brains of the twenty seven passengers.

The brain belonging to the wire rimmed glasses and bohemian blue shirt chatters a Connemara stream's worth of gossip about the next door neighbours to the brain of the brown messy bun and sensible white shoes. They've been friends for thirty years.

Behind the two middle-aged brains sits the brain of the textbook version of freshmeat business. A twenty-something in a sharp jacket and jeans who holds the hand of a svelte model with a camera bigger than a swan's neck. Together they are caught in a duet of money and expectations of love.

Over to the left is the brain of a bouncy castle. Well, not literally, but the way the mind leaps from sheep to cloud to the curiousity of Connemara sunshine versus the mystery of mist blown moorlands, one wouldn't be wrong to deduce so.

The brain at the front of the bus is full of burden. Burden at bearing patience at the long journey ahead of which, despite the declared time of two hours before the bus began trekking, cannot see an end. And now the brain feels accute hunger and needs the toilet quite badly.

Which brain is the best? The most normal? The wisest? The smartest? But who are we to give definition? Brains are brains. Presently there is a total thirty-nine living in yellowed jars at the Victorian pathology museum of St Barthomew's hospital in London.

And that means, as far as anyone knows, we are all normal here.

Brains are brains.

So take the hands, take the stream, take the road that does not seem.

Far beyond the fallen skies, beyond the rolling hills. Find future sitting in the southern lands and fantasy through a lean-to.

Come count these brains of the twenty seven. All together come as one, many and none.

That is all. 

Remember then, when people come, kicking the sky down from overhead, normal is not a destination, it is a stream of thought, trapped between grocery lists and restaurant recipes. It is the brain chirping "yellow car" for the umteenth time, just because it can. Especially if present in a country known to have a regular dose of yellow vehicles for reasons still unknown.

What thoughts pass by on the rocky roads, rolling, won't fit into the cutout squares where peat moss sat for billions of years. No, its more likely these thoughts will wash downstream with the pins and coins, the bones and toys of days long past which melted deep into the earth as it grew and died, grew and died, over and over. Cementing the brains of humanity into the very earth itself.

Sink deeper now, into the sheets of dreamland.

Don't live normal. Live your story.

Cardiff: City of Curios

Some people don't know where Cardiff is, most people don't particularly care about going there. Wales. Really? Tiny. Sidelined next to the big ones. England. Scotland. What's there to do in Wales but see sheep? A lot of sheep?

And stone circles. Lots. Also sacrificial stones. This is a park.

Well, yes, there are sheep. But then again, trek anywhere outside of city walls in the entirety of the United Kingdom (or the green isle of Ireland) and you are going to see sheep. Triple the usual amount too, seeing as it is lamb season.

The other thing people identify Cardiff with is it's position as the base of operations and general action for anything relating to that snazzy and ever-popular network known as the BBC. Everything from little period dramas like Society at Cranford, to series which got far bigger than first imagined like Poldark. Add in more modern suspects like Luther and Misfits and drop the flagship series of Doctor Who, and well, there's few people in the world who don't know what you're talking about.

As such, the city of Cardiff and the country of Wales itself, is a candy store for any afficiando of any BBC drama. Every corner has ended up on a show at least once, if not been used multiple times over for everything from a standard mystery to a supernatural spree.

Except that is not Cardiff. Not really. Or rather, Cardiff is a million more little things than that. Truly, Cardiff is a giant curiousity shop.

On the surface it is just any other town, but peel back the layers, like you might an onion and you see the underbelly that has been germinating thanks to years upon years of countless creative individuals descending upon the town for months at a time to funnel their imaginations into sense, suspense and success for audience satisfaction (and absolute obsession).

Start by wandering down to Cardiff Bay. Make the stop into the fabulous and fantastic Doctor Who Experience (just get it out of your system), spy the TARDIS perched on a rock in the harbour, not far from the Norwegian church where the famous Roald Dahl was baptised as a baby.

Then, beyond you'll spy a great silver building with Welsh words wrapping in block cut-out letters at the front. The Millenium Centre. The words translate to "in these stones horizons sing" and oh do the stones of Wales sing. Stories after stories await in all the corners of Cardiff, whether you believe Captain Jack Harkness is going to saunter up from the Torchwood base below the centre, his miltary coat swinging and witty grin quirked (see wiki if you don't know this awesome character) or you wonder who the people are who pass in and out the doors or along the street. What they do. Who they are. What they have done.

The Millenium Centre (under which sits the Torchwood base of course)

Meander your way back up to Cardiff and you'll probably pass under a bridge stamped with "brains or brawn." If you're me, you'll snort and think, "obvious. Brains are far more superior." The reality is a little bit less interesting as it's just a play on the Welsh branded beer 'Brains.' Once you've hit the city make a beeline for Cardiff castle. It's impressive. Grand walls and a huge grass courtyard lead up to a looming hill on which is perched the central tower. A medieval masterpiece.

It's Brains you want!

The reality? It's a mix-matched revitalised Gothic style with Victorian period flair on the inside and is more of a flagship for the secret curio side of Cardiff than any medieval history might be. Each room is more elaborate than the last, as the Victorian owner, Lord Bute was more focused on updating (and generally bulldozing over (in the metaphorical sense) old Roman and medieval remains into something resembling an overgrown Victorian country house. Excessive is an understatement. But that was the point. Besides, you might say the BBC are a bit excessive with some of their shows so humanity hasn't exactly grown out of the desire to show off stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. Crammed into architectural corners and wooden cupboards.

Back side of Cardiff Castle seen from Bute Park.

None of those are the best bits though. It's finding the corners and corridoors which run in, out, around and between the streets and straight lines of buildings. Known as the arcades these are where the curiousities of Cardiff shine. Quaint tea rooms, old-fashioned barber shops, a bespoke tailor, a boardgame merchant, book shop, camera store and a shop selling more buttons than you coud ever imagine, not to mention the usual vintage clothing and shoe shops. Cardiff also has a ridiculous number of joke and costume shops (possibly an aftershock of it being a centre for crazy creatives who have day jobs prentending to be different people or making characters get into unfortunate situations).

Seating at a cafe down one arcade.

There is even an ice cream parlour, known as Science Cream, which, in front of your eyes, has lab equipped and dressed employees mix up your ice cream using the special ingredient of liquid nitrogen to do so.

Best ice cream ever. And I'm not a big ice cream fan.

 The usual town marketplace, though one of the rare covered ones (as most towns have open air these days) pales in comparision, though it too is a fun romp of two stories full of fresh fruits, veggies, meats, fish, breads, desserts, cafes, fabrics, DIY bits and other such things.

Even the hostels are quirky. The Bunk House is especially so with it's dark main entrance illuminated by lightbulbs in vintage birdcages and a ceiling covered in a rainbow of paper cranes, hot air balloons and faerie lights. The seating is made up of old leather couches, picnic tables with lit up umbrellas and vintage beds with metal or wood headboards and covered in colourful quilts, throws and pillows.

All in all, it makes you wonder at times where the creativity started. Was it Cardiff? With it's blocks of houses called Silurian Place (which happens to be an alien species featured in Doctor Who) or was it just the thousands of creative people and their minds leaking their imaginations across the pavement?

Either way, don't go to Cardiff with the off-chance hope of knocking elbows with actors, writers and directors of your favourite shows, or for fan-cheering the famous locations. Well, you can do that, but also go to Cardiff to explore the corners and quirks.

Who knows, if you sit and think hard enough, some of your brilliant imagination might leave a splash of paint which will be picked up and used in your favourite show later on.

Moony

Lightbulbs: A Drabble

She wasn't a Betty. Or a Betsy. Not even a Milly, a Molly or a Mandy. Certainly not a Mary or a Charlotte.

Catherine was too pretentious and Elizabeth, too grand.

No, she was just Terry.



This is all learned the third time I met her. Directly, anyway. Though even as I say third time, it might have been the first, for all the two of us knew in the moment. It wasn't until later that I connected the other signposts together.

Either way, it held more weight than our first meeting. Now that one was more of a "pass the salt please" situation, let alone an afternoon's tittle tattle over tea or a duel of wits over drinks. It was born from the stupidity the human race descends into after months of grey lightbulbs suddenly getting switched over to halogen golden. Like flies to flame humanity descended outdoors. Coupled with the usual insanity around working hours, well, I found myself playing human Tetris as I navigated my way through a station and dive-bombed, Olympic style, through the closing doors of the train I needed.

The trials weren't over. Once on, I was still in such fast forward motion I tripped a pair of home-painted converse and slipped into the crack between a six foot five business man with discreet dreadlocks and a gaggle of Spanish girls in heels, only to nearly fall in the lap of an older lady with Einstein hair and a pink jumper with cherries all over it.

I apologised profusely and managed to gather my bearings.

"Up 'n at 'em dear. Don't want to miss your stop."

I apologised again. Righted myself properly and promptly buried my nose in my phone. Three stops later the lady was off and three more stops later the train was less like a can of beans but I was off anyway and back into fresh air and sunshine. I forgot the encounter.

The second time I met her I dropped the three avocadoes I was analysing. You can never tell with avocadoes. Ripe or not to be ripe. That is the ridiculous question and I spend more than enough time as it is, agonising over purchases at the supermarket.

I was bent down, mortified, when a weathered hand dropped into my vision and passed me one avocado.

"Perfect that'un."

"Probably."

"Is. See?" She knocked it with a fist. I winced, practically feeling the avocado squish. "You can always tell the squidgy ones. Bad for business having avocadoes. Don't want a squidgy business."

"Of course."

The old lady eyed me down, "work hard. Help's always wanted. Somewhere. And people always talk. Somewhere."  

"Thanks." I nodded and scarpered off toward the cheeses, even though I had no intention of getting any.

The third time my car had broken down near a canal. I plonked next to it to wait. On the bend of the water's edge was a boat called "Dances with Bears." I idly picked at the grass around my crossed legs and wondered if it was inspired by the film Dances with Wolves, when the boat began to move.

Slowly.

Inch by inch it chugged ahead. A man and woman of around fifty popped out of either side of the boat and jumped up onto the bank.

They began pulling at the levers to set the lock so the boat could move down to the next level as it slipped forward, nose close to the gate. At the back wheel was an old lady of nearly ninety, with Einstein hair and a pink, cherry decorated jumper.

I was nearly at the point of connecting the dots when a furry missile bowled me over. Stick in a drooling mouth, I realised a second later it was only a dog.

"June! Sit!" The old lady, who was presently waiting on the lock to fill with water, commanded.

The dog sat. Panting.

"She's missing a lightbulb today. Land-sick." The lady shouted over to me. I shuffled up from my position on the grass, just to be in polite talking distance.

"It's fine." I said.

The old lady harumphed. "Not on my watch. Been waiting years to command my own ship. A dog's not ruining it."

"Don't mind." I said.

"I don't need help. I said. I don't need help. I'm going to do this." The old lady ranted on, not quite noticing I was standing nearby. Helpless under her tirade.

"Your generation doesn't do anything. We did it all. All. Least my son's generation knew to listen. They had a lightbulb on somewhere." Her rant was cut short by a shout from the couple.

"Terry move 'er in!" They called. "We're ready!"

"Ah. Good timing. Have a lightbulb on me. Buy yourself a boat with lightbulbs." Words passed on, she turned her attention down the narrow strip of the lock and canal. "Come on girl. Let's do this." Inch by inch, the long boat slipped deftly between the narrow sides of the lock bridge and walls.

I cheered with the couple who watched from the other end of the lock.

"Happy trekking," Terry waved. "Places to be and all that."  She whistled with her fingers between her teeth.

"Get on ye runt!" She shouted at her dog. "This bear waits for no creature."

Inspired by the luck of catching a boat moving through a lock on a canal in Wales and my favourite spoken word poet, Shane Koyczan, who grew up not far from my little hometown. Below you'll find the specific poem if your curious. Formally it's known as "Help Wanted" but in the spoke word circles it's got the nickname of "Grandma's Got Her Game On."

Moony.

Bath: A Tub of History

Stylish. Unanimous. Uniform. Sleek.

Polished.

The famous Royal Crescent.

Those words and their synonyms summarise Bath. A city which looks to have been built in one era, when in reality, it is part of as many eras as any city in these parts of the world. So what makes it so special? It's in the layers.

Or perhaps it's all in the footnotes.

The Romans founded it.

The Georgian era nobility kept it.

The 21st century stylises it.

When someone asks what period you would most like to go back to, what would you say?

In my experience, most people answer the question as asked. With what period they would love to visit or live in. The problem? Well, the past is never so shiny as we make it out to be and so very few answers are, "no I am quite happy in my own time period."

Today, Bath embodies that particular question. Prompting imaginations to run while as you walk streets lined with the gorgeous symmetry of Georgian design and local, golden Bath stone.

Step down an alley, peer through a crack and you'll start seeing something different. A bit like laying down tiles for a mosaic, Bath is not the sum of one thing. It is the sum of many things. Many eras. But literally built on top of the other.

Below street level, in a hideaway alley behind a row of homes, is the sole remaining Roman gateway. Now it is a just another arched doorway tucked away and forgotten.

Outside the Baths, this is all that's left of the Roman's here.

 Walk to the side of any building and you'll spy the cracks in the facade since the city died off for a time after the Romans left, picked up a little during the medieval period and then died again. Its life-curing waters from the United Kingdom's only hot springs, not enough to sustain the town.

That is, until the 1700's when Queen Anne decided she'd test the legendary water and thus it was built up, to the state it remains in today, with medieval buildings touched up and covered over with the tidy Grecian inspired symmetery and design which is so inconcruous against the time period's excessive fashion of giant hair and giant dresses.

Except for one thing, it's all a facade.

Look in the corner of your eye where you never want to look. Who knows what you'll see.

 Imagine this: elaborate head-pieces which often involved fruit, birds and even a model ship in one woman's hair, was a way to distract everyone's noses from everyone else (since utterly no one properly bathed back then). Even the bathing in the famous spring baths was done still in a mostly complete costume.

Ridiculous. But hey, they were human. We're still human. The internet is 95% full of ridiculous cat pictures and videos. Nothing changes. Humans still dress up, put on shows, put on masks and try on new faces, depending on the people they are with or situations they are in. 

Remembering, and musing upon facades and their place in our lives is the sole reason why I would say visit Bath. To spend the day exploring its hidden corners and tendency to secrete away things which aren't tidy, stylish and neat.

Like this hideout/cafe. Located behind various bushes secreted underneath a bridge of busy traffic.

 
For me, well, I love good wear and tear, prefering to side with the Japanese view that anything weathered has far more value than something still pristine and untouched. Wear shows use, history and love or desire. But that's me and my personal preference for life. Bath is a puzzle to be ripped apart rather than put back together which makes for an entertaining day of backwards thinking while you pause to photograph the stunning Pulteney Bridge (you might recognise it from the film of Les Miserables where Javert drops to his death), the dizzying Circus or austere Royal Crescent. 

Yes, this is that famous bridge.

 When you first visit Bath don't get pulled into the tourist traps of the Jane Austen Centre, the Roman Baths or the modern Thermae Bath Spa, the Fashion museum or other such attractions.

Start by walking around. Look. Explore. Peer into corners. You'll see wear, tear and ruin beyond the stylish wig of golden stone. Then go check out the tourist spots.

Compare. Which is better? Which is more real? It's not like the Georgian style is a Doctor Who-esque perception filter. Nope. It's real too. Just in a different way.

The Weeping Angels are coming.

And don't forget to try some of the spring water at the Roman Baths.


It will change your life. (Translation: Just open the flipping door and...snap).

Just maybe not how you were expecting.


Moony.

Season's Greetings

Swinging her bumble-bee coloured wellies while attempting to dive-bomb bread crumbs onto the heads of unsuspecting goose subjects, the little girl gained no attention from her human relations.

Relations being a loose term by the way. For various reasons.

Mostly though, it lies within this particular day of baby whisper breezes, and one tentative cherry blossom who had had too many seasons of being destroyed by wayward footballs to come out too full for too long. Not to mention it hit zero the night before anyway.

It was supposed to be the season of new starts and Winter was on a mission despite having recently retired only a few days prior. As he approached the girl, better known to himself and other folk of nature as Spring, she landed a bit of crust on the head of a bobbing goose, causing it to squawk, spin around and pull the others nearby into a frenzy of waddling argument.

"Don't the humans do enough of that already?"

"Nope." She replied popping the "p." She tore off another piece and held it up near her nose, one eye closed and the other squinting an angle of aim. "It's fun."

Winter snorted and gracefully folded his six foot plus frame onto the bench. Spring turned her head sideways to Winter and giggled.

"Still carrying that face? Don't you get bored. Looking like cracked brownies? I would." 

Winter raised a brow at her sugary metaphor. Last time he had seen Spring she had resembled the cartoon version of a Roma. In other words, a lithe dancer the colour of chocolate with a voice of drum beats. "No," he replied."Besides, looks neither here nor anywhere this side south of the Arbor. It's your turn. Where's the weather gone? Cherry blossoms don't count either. Percy came back yesterday so Demeter's all jubilant."

"Bored. Bored. Utterly bored."

"You could do your job."

"Boring. Did you see that exhibition last week? The beard one? Humans like that sort of thing. And cats. They love cats." With each sentence Spring lobbed a bread bit at a goose, letting out a little "ha" of triumph when the targets lost balance.

"They also like warm weather which facilitates the growing of cherries and strawberries." Winter added with all the patience required of one who tries snowshoeing for the first time. Spring dropped her bag of bread and hopped up on the bench, leaning, elbows on the back of the bench, toward Winter, who merely raised a brow as she exclaimed.

"Do they really. Really? Cause I couldn't see my feet yesterday. I think I was somewhere in Asia. In a field of white stuff."

"You don't say?" Winter drawled.

"Not done yet! Obviously not snow. Plastic probably. Bags. Wasn't really noticing. Cause the moutain was a million, trillion times better than snow. Not cold either. They wouldn't like real strawberries. Too squishy. Too much juice."   

Winter opened his mouth but Spring interrupted with a "oh look! See. See. That's why they don't care. Strawberry ice cream." She pointed at a five year old boy trailing behind his mother, occupied with breaking up a duel for a plastic giraffe between twin girls in the stroller she pushed.

"Give me one reason. One. Why should I give humans a new set of lives this year? Got my geese games. They've got cat pictures. Even. Square. Haven't Anansi and Loki gotten back from the tour yet? Time to move on."

"And leave the storytelling to the Greeks? Have you really fallen so far?" Winter pushed up from the bench in a huff. "You've lost me my best toque."

Spring snorted. "Toque? Seriously? You care about that?"

"I can care about lots of things. One happens to be my favourite hat."

Spring hopped off the bench and looked up at Winter. "Who'd ya bet?"

"Echo." Winter sighed and scuffed his boot in the mud looking more like a child than Spring. The geese who had lingered in hopes of further food scattered, calling Winter various names unmentionable in polite company.

Spring growled and pull off a true tantrum of stomping, fist punching and unintelligeable noises. One goose, either a bit slower in the head than most, or a bit more stupidly brave, got caught in the crossfire of one particular lash out of her bumble-bee wellie.

"Well then. I'll just have to prove that empty girl wrong. Words mean mud and I've got plenty to turn over. Some seeds to plant."

"Is she still playing in the human's fashion world?"

"Yep."

"Still obsessed with Narciss?"

"Yep."

"Brilliant. Laters Winter. I've got me a field of narcissus to grow."

Graveyards: A Memory in Photos

Deep within the Acropolis at Glasgow, Scotland. There is life to death.

Western culture, these days anyway, often associates graveyards with fright, fear ad misfortune. They are a place where teens go to scare each other and what often decorate lawns during the festival of Halloween (except made of plasitc, wood or plaster, rather than proper stone, or even, marble, for the wealthy sorts).

Between graves in Montmatre, Paris.

In reality, graveyards are a place for deep contemplation and remembrance. A bit like the churches, which are usually attached, are meant for. (Though they are admittedly fantastic places to dive in, from out of a downpour).

Plus you don't have to be religious to appreciate contemplation and remember people of the past, you just need to be human.

One thing all humans have in common?

In the seemingly distant future that is impossibly hard to comprehend whether you are on the tail end or the ear tips, we will all pass on. Eventually.

After all, in the words of the great Terry Pratchett (from the mouth of his greatest character and who has just passed on recently himself):

“DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Whatever we pass on too is, of course, up for eternal debate. It's what humans spend life doing and it's what makes the world go 'round.

“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent   

Either way, at some point we'll all go stomach up, like fish (but not really, that's just a metaphor thank you), and our presence will cease to exist on this particular plane.

For me, graveyards take on further meaning and more purpose than remembering the impermence of humanity or honouring the greats who came before me.

Graveyards provide a place to draw inspiration for characters in the written and visual mediums.

What follows are a few of my favourite graveyards in terms of the unique characters found there, or the general qualities of the grounds or grave stones, in these quiet but oft misunderstood environs.

This is the life beyond the grave...

Dance to the tune of Symphonie Fantastique in Montmartre Cemetery, Paris, France.

Be wary of the sentinels.

Break from the forest of the London metropolis and into the memories of Latimer.

Rest a while among the grasses of the beloved of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

Remember. Don't scare the guardians. This is crucial.

And don't forget to visit the greats gone before. (Oxford, Oxfordshire)

So long and thanks for all the fish who have swam the seas of before. Now go. Just keep swimming. It'll be your turn soon enough.

They watch over us. Somewhere. Somewhen. In a somehow of some here.

Moony.

Be a Cloud: Isle of Skye

Hopping a fence to a fantastic view.

 

Above the sky, clouds streak, they bob and pass along in a mild manner more befitting a dodgy old man with  walking stick than amorphous miracles of nature which humans will idly observe into definable form.

There a cow. A cat. Now a ship. Stretched into a dragon. A boy reading a book. A griffin circling a snake. Now two dragons dancing. 

The Isle of Skye is what I imagined Tir na nOg might be like if it does actually exist somewhere on this plane of the world. Remote. Forlorn but full of the sheep wool emotions brought on by picturesque forests, hills, waters and villages. 

To properly appreciate the Isle, you'll need to just find a hill. Pause. Breath and imagine yourself into another time period. I did the Isle in a day trip and perhaps that could be deemed as insufficient for true appreciation. Many travel sites, locals and past visitors recommend a minimum of three days or even up to a full week. I agree. I wish I could go back to slow down and wander. Nonetheless, any time on the Isle of Skye is million times worth it. 

The few homes in the village I landed in, known as Uig.

 

The few hours of daylight which I had, rendered me speechless. To the point where all was empty in a mind with generally moves at the speed cars on a race track in terms of imagination and general thoughts. The only things to exist was the world and I. I and the world. Feet sinking slightly in damp hillside, I tramped through a sheep field in search of a faerie fort said to be nearby. Instead, I found a glade with a bubbling stream and a fallen log turned bridge. Then I climbed a hill, hopped a fence and stood before the horizon. 

The sun was heavy over the water and arched off a ferry boat rumbling its way out of the harbour. Soon it settled as a backdrop to a cliff, jutting out like a great giant's fist. The wind picked up, whirling a distant flag down the way, in the harbour where sat a token petrol station and a restaurant near two cottages on the back hill. All was dark and closed for business thanks to an electrical outage which had occurred just a half hour earlier as I learned from the lone employee behind the bar at the restaurant.

So I turned my feet back out the door and wandered up and down the harbour walk. 

My only company were two grubby capped Scots gabbing away about carpentry work in front of their white lorry, a retired couple seated instead a red Peugeot and a grey beard dipping into a cigarette as he also strolled up and down the walkway. Periodically, the whispering breeze was interrupted with the staccato of seagull shouts. Time inched in this bubble. Which admittedly, for all that I love the thrill of being lost on the winds, just me and nature, I did much prefer to be back in Inverness by nightfall so I could snuggle under thick white down sheets in the old manor turned B&B I had stumbled across in search for an inviting but reasonably priced hostel. 

I wandered. Back and forth in the October breeze, feeling a stronger and stronger need to talk out loud as I am wont to do when alone. Well I wasn't entirely, but it certainly felt like it. So I did. Only to smile sheepishly at the looks the few other individuals gave me, or as cars rumbled past with windows down.

Eventually, the sole bus I could take back, before sometime late the next morning, came breezing into the harbour at exactly 5:22pm and I was back to the central town in time to catch my return coach back to Inverness.

Town of Portree

 The Isle of Skye is the sort of place you visit if you want to feel either at one with nature, alone with nature, lost in nature or all three at once. Even if you're wandering the narrow, winding streets of the main town of Portree, nature encircles it so strongly it takes all of five minutes walk in any direction to either hit water, a trail or a road surrounded by trees, eventually fields and probably sheep. Plus the occasional punctuation of a ruinous tower, windmill or cottage. 

There is much to see on the Isle of Skye; faerie forts, a castle and village life among many other things, but really, if you want to find something special, just have a wander. Grad a bus out somewhere. Then, no matter how you view adventure down the nose, you'll be guaranteed to find a place of calmness, bobbing along the wild roads of Skye like an amorphous cloud. Just being.

The Clouds

A/N:  Clouds are amorphous individuals who are about as rare as any of the Wee Folk. They have strong opinions about being captured on camera and yet they are permanently captured in our imagination. As such, the following drabble and upcoming travel post were both inspired much more by the magic of imagination than anything so dull as a common photograph* (according to the resident cloud experts being the persons known only as Just Argument and Unjust Argument who are most commonly located in The Middle of a debate on Proper Education**).

Below find two piquant examples of the wisdom of The Clouds:

How can I study from below, that which is above?

ARISTOPHANES, The Clouds

The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.

ARISTOPHANES, The Clouds

Clouded Perspectives

Just so you know, we see you all as you grapevines of hairless ape, see fish. Flowing, occasionally or often (depending on the day), across a sea of checker boards.

Other occasions (not birthday parties, unless you're the parent), struggling against a sea, turbulent and tumultuous. Strenuous and solitary.

Travelling in schools, learning in boxes begotted by boxes.

How you lot manage to stand inside four walls when you're a stick of angles and elbows we clouds have yet to discern a reasoned method. Much like how you lot have yet to figure out the dolphins have been experimenting on you for a millenia. Those clicks and clacking? They're laughing. At you lot.

Honestly, just take a moment to think. How is it even possible to survive in the sea of the world if most of the time is spent secreted away within the coral concrete of boxes. Windows are a measly invention. Again, the four corners and sides thing. And only just so far in four directions and a single distance. Unless there happens to be a tree blocking the view and then, what's the point in living? A tree is blocking your view. (And don't chop it down. Another one will grow by the time you all have gone extinct via apple-crate suffocation).

We haven't even delved into the dissolution of touch but that'll be in a whole other epoch dictating the Misinformed Melodies to various monstrosities of the Modern Age.

Technology is one. That scrawny boy, Commerce, is another.

But we have gotten side-tracked while we stand on this soap bubble for a moment.

As creatures of the sky we are free from your boxes. Untangeble. Poor old William Wordsworth tried desperately to contain us in a poem.  That didn't work out by the way. If you haven't read it, we'll spare you the pain and just say he ended up realising being human is terribly lonely business. Stuck in bodies and minds which ooze a combination of gangreen and ice cream. Simultaneously. How exhausting.

We come with less of the toothpaste ooze which combine humans and physical bodies and more sequence. The closest available metaphor to this particularly narrow word happens to be a classic game of cat's cradle. Done to the tune plucked on the skeins of a lyre.

Do that childhood thing again. Watch us for a while. Pearly bulbs, grey streaks, bulbuous black masses which fall across blue skies, turning all to shadow. Then, slowly, on a breath of wind we flow away, leaving a mass of pale grey blue which encircles the land from green hill to green wood.

Until you have been a cloud, spread eagled over grassy parkland, untouched by picnic baskets and playthings, you won't learn the truth of the universe.

A truth which is a cloud, coming up the lake on an August afternoon.

Moony.

*This thereby meaning my next travel post on the Isle of Skye got centred around the notion of clouds when really, after the fact, I realised captured more photos of hills and picturesque cottages then clouds.

**See Aristophanes The Clouds for further Proper Education on methods of rhetoric disguised as a rather hilarious comedy between a father, son and Sophocles himself.

Quiet Destiny: Delphi

At one point, humans saw this city, town, more village with accompanying attractions (these days), as the centre of the world.

A modern Delphic home.

Athens might have been the seat of power but Delphi predicted who would sit in it. Delphi predicted who would die, marry, prosper and plummet. Or rather, the Delphic oracle did.

According to mythology (and a bit of background for those unfamiliar with ancient Greek history), Zeus wanted to locate the exact centre of the world and to do this he released two eagles at opposite ends of the earth. Eventually the eagles met at Delphi and so it was here that Zeus marked the spot with a large, egg-shaped stone called the omphalos ("navel" or belly button). Additionally, the site of Delphi is said to have been the home of the oracle of the earth goddess Gaia who was guarded by a great serpent called Pythos. The god Apollo killed Pythos and forced Gaia to leave Delphi and ever after the temple of Delphi belonged to Apollo's oracle.

The omphalos.

I came to this particular site as part of an experiential course during my first degree (part of it being in Greek and Roman Studies). The morning had seen my group and I get drowned in rain only to have to stomp through the mushy mud of dirt and grass, out to an old archeological site, still containing bits of leftover ancient pottery deemed not necessary to take back for analysis and safe-keeping.

By the time we reached Delphi, a few hours later, my feet were mostly dry, my socks not and my rolled up jeans were simply damp, rather than heavy with water. Slipping on sandals in favour of drenched hiking boots I sat with my mouth dropped open (as it was wont to do for most of the months spent on the trip).

We were rolling around the edges and corners of the Parnassus mountains, milimeters from sheer dropping cliffs of grassland and forest as we delved into a valley where, on the mountain edges, glancing out toward an ocean bay and harbour, was the present day town of Delphi, with the ancient city still scattered about above it.

Delphi is best visited at the end of a journey, as coming around the sheer corners as the sun is heavy in the sky at four o'clock in the afternoon, the light strikes down between the high mountains, richocheting over the distant waters and lights softly upon the first evidence of ancient life. A plateau jutting out from the cliffs, just below the main road where a circular temple sits.

Then, as you arrive into the village, all is silent. It's siesta time for the locals. You might spot an orange cat or two though. Climb up and up stone steps in small alleys and you'll break out into glorious open fields which are reminiscent of that final scene in Sound of Music when the characters sing "The Hills are Alive." My classmates and I did exactly that when we found that spot.

Glorious open grasslands, bright sun and turn around for a stunning backdrop, valley view.

Then, pop back down to the center of the modern town and climb up more stairs and a long winding golden dirt path. You'll first come across a stadium where athletic competitions were held, then you'll set foot in a theatre, which honestly has the best view of any theatre, with a view of the whole valley falling down before their feet. You feel on top of the world.

Criss-cross stairs in the town.

Even more so when you finally reach the top of all the old ruins and set your hand on the omphalos stone. Smooth and warm, it certainly feels as if it could be an egg.

Now, go find yourself a spot to stand upon and shout your destiny to the world. If the oracle could make up whatever she felt fit, in complete metaphorical mumbo-jumbo too. So can you. Her words were taken to seriously and as a result, controlled not just private matters but matters of state, religion and economics. Plus she got rich off a lot of gifts.

If you are going to Greece, make Delphi part of your stop. It might be a quiet town nowadays but it holds great mystery and power. Power over ones destiny which can still be felt, whether you are standing before the omphalous of above the great expanse of the world below.

You are alive, on top, and at the centre of the world.
Moony.