what does a man love?

A man is his own worth enemy

It's hard to decide how much you're worth. What is clear is that there are rich men and poor men in the world, and that there are degrees of heterogeneity between, as well as within, each group.

Everyone knows that a man loves what makes him proud and upright. Whatever it is that makes him bigger and better and stronger and greater. All the things a great man is, whatever it is that makes him more like this, that is what a man loves. 

unmarked graves and free food

I left home a bit early yesterday so that I could go by the old cemetery and take a photo of an (preferably) unmarked grave. 
I wanted a photo that I could put  with a post about an idea I had the day before. 
I was thinking about the signature and especially about the signature of an illiterate person - the cross. It occurred to me that what we sign, remains. It's not just a very physical remainder but also in some ways a work that we have made on earth. 
That got me thinking of gravestones. They are something that remains but that others write upon or sign. 
Anyway, I ended up not having time to go by the cemetery but found that I had parked in front of one of our town's newish community gardens ( www.justfreefood.blogspot.com. )

I sat in the car looking at it for awhile, thinking about wild graves and what kind of marks plants and cultivation make on the earth and what 'remains' might mean in that context. 

So here are some photos of our community garden, for me today some grave heaps and humps and unmarked stones.

doing nothing

It was raining most of the day. 

I tried to photograph the raindrops falling from the giant walnut leaves but couldn't capture them. 

Instead I looked out all the other windows in turn and took photographs from some of them.

I made an eclectic music mix for christmas and mucked around with iMovie. P. listened to Sherlock Holmes on audio books. I. came over to deliver some work for P. and stayed for a cuppa and a chat about W.G. Sebald, train travel, falling into work rather than choosing it and how we are cyborgically connected beyond our wishes. Early on I made muesli with strawberries and apricots and yoghurt, later I made a napoli sauce and gnocchi.
The world slowed down for me today or did I slow it down by doing nothing?

house as coffin

Someone told me of an old Touareg saying today,

 The house is the coffin of living people

It makes me wonder what life would be if there was nothing between me and the sky and the world.

How would my skin feel? What would I know? Who would I share the world with?

they speak me

I have been away from here for a long time. We have just returned from camping and find the world wet with floods. There are rivers where there were none. 

We slipped back into town and I had an idea to remain in hiding for a few days by avoiding announcing our arrival just yet. But we had to go to the supermarket and aha and alas- we were spotted.

 

By the time I got back up the hill an email was waiting for me. 'Heard you had returned. There is a picnic tomorrow 1pm at the lake'

This is something I have been thinking about: how the town is made of these social gossip networks - this chattering that is the materiality of the place. 

Place as shell

This weekend I found what I think is a striking description of place. 

In a letter to Paul Celan the German-Swiss  poet Nelly Sachs writes:

"When great weariness besets me I think of Paris and Dresden, both shells for the most beloved of people"

(Celan lived in Paris while her great friend Gudrun, who had saved the lives of Nelly and her mother, lived in Dresden)  

from Paul Celan Nelly Sachs Correspondence

Sheep Meadow Press, 1995

Thinking of place as a shell has so many reverberations for me: something that grows on one, a membrane one pulls around one, something that precipitates and binds..thank you Nelly.

moving home

I have been away from here for awhile, moving home.

Sorting, discarding and giving away things, then packing 

everything up and moving it all to another place. 

I wish I was more like a snail.