rushing or my being is doing

I rushed today- collating research for a conference paper, making soup, baking a fish, writing emails, buying nappies for my friend's new baby, drinking coffee, drinking green tea, drinking Lapsong Souchong; drinking everything and anything to keep the seconds ticking while I planned a trip to Paris, thought about sitting down and read my daughter books and sent invitations to an artists event I am organizing. I was bred like this, through nature or nurture, through watching my mother or through my DNA programming; a large part of my being is doing. I split days into hours and minutes and seconds and check diaries, emails, blogs and bank accounts. The weather report can be accessed, along with the latest news and checking out cheap flights for a future holiday, while stirring a sauce and when I am at work I do not walk I run. My life partner is the complete opposite of this, thank goodness. I have the energy of a toddler, the buzz of a power station.

stopping

The tumble dryer has just stopped turning. This morning we walked to the granite citadel, we stepped through the bitter wind, marched against a heavy ashen sky,we drank Brazlian coffee and talked of trips to Germany and pragmatism versus hedonism.This afternoon I made fairy cakes decorated in thick white icing with multi-coloured hundreds and thousands. Then we drank Japanese green tea and held a tiny new-born baby and felt the fire of new beginnings. This evening we made egg mayonnaise, did the washing up and danced to Grease Lightening à trois while he swam. Now, the day is finishing and I will fold hot washing as the tumble dryer has just stopped turning.

back again

One year later and I am back again. I started writing here on January the 24th 2008. I wrote posts for one year, stopping in December 2008. One year later and I am back again. Back here to write of waves, upside down journeys, dark skies, the blue sea, granite walls, sleeping children and the little moments which set my fingers clicking on the keyboard; words falling soft as midnight snowflakes, white and cold against the navy sky. I am back with vowels and consonants, words and sentences and paragraphs to fill my pixel landscape. I am back scratching stories into the empty screen, snuggling inside the letters that I write. I return because of the very evrydayness of this exercise, this electronic trace of space and time. I go now to finish my bowl of carrot, sweet potato and cumin soup, my slice of brown bread and feta cheese.

today

My head is not concentrated at the moment. I feel tired and weary and thin like tissue paper, like at any moment I might tear. I have been doing too much and holding up bridges and tending to sick people with bad bad backs and babies sleepless chicken pox nights. I want to write about my journey in London and finish a story before starting another. But instead life is overlapping again, one shift and click and the focus changes. I have to take a different picture. I have been meaning to complete and my head was filled with plans: tying knots, sticking stamps, sealing packages. But I got cross this morning and grouched at my children and then felt guilty like a stone as I walked home. I went to the market and bought sweet satsumas; ' doux' soft for the children the fruit man said. He grinned at my baby and she smiled back and then the world was better. So, we went and drank coffee and had a moment of respite. It's been a day where clouds have appeared and vanished and I have felt like rain and  sunshine. Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat and I want to put a penny in the old man's hat and feel right and able. So, I'll sing a song for sixpence and fill my bed with water bottles with crochet jackets and send myself to sleep with camomile . I'll not dream of  bad worms from my daughter's last night nightmare, for that worm makes little boys turn into other worms and is long and stripey and scarey as a bed. Now,  a picture of a dreamcatcher bedecks the wall, letting only the good dreams  filter through. The bad dreams will stay trapped in the net, disappearing with the light of day. The dreamcatcher will transform the night.

day one part4

That evening the music continues. We travel underground to Kings Cross Place, get lost in a dark, harsh hail storm ; a shower of ice and hard snow that blows us from pavement to road. We fall into a pub called the Driver Bar to escape the weather and eat a sticky sweet salad and chips and an upmarket burger with nice mayonnaise. The barmaid is blond and friendly and trendy and wants me to taste gin and cucumber and I sip my drink and  watch men in suits, looking smart, drinking beer with curious male camaradery. Later, we slip through glass doors into a huge open space with chocolate brown poofs shaped like mushrooms. Our tickets are booked to see an experimental music concert, part of the Multiplier Series, curated by composer graham Firkin. ' ..... with three oustanding ensembles exploring single instrumental timbres, The Veya Saxophone Quartetn Elysian Strings and duo  Parkinson Saunders, performing music by French hard hitting iconic composer Louis Andriessen, English purist Howard Skempton, American pioneer Alvin Lucier and the rhythmic persistence of Joe Cutler and Firkin himself'.

We sit in cabaret style clusters and in front of the stage are huge piles of silk cushions in fushia, burnt orange, green and turqouise blue. We are invited to listen and lie. The music envelops, shakes and shudders; brusquely changing moving, waking. I am an intrepid explorer of this new territory, and my ears are delighted by what they hear.

When we leave the concert it is snowing outside. Huge white flakes are tumbling from the black night sky and gently coating the grey city pavements. We grin and make our way back to our hotel room.

Day one part3

I unpack, make home, place and space, settle and nestle myself and my things. Tops and skirts are hung in wardrobes, fabric is unfolded. This is my first task whenever I arrive somewhere new. I appropriate. We go out again and eat under a church in a crypt where dead bodies lie. We sit on high chairs in a sandstone room and taste roast potatoes and pumpkin bake and hot gammon sandwiches. The dead may turn in their graves, but perhaps they enjoy the smell of the food and the idle lunchtime banter. Upstairs in the church we stumble upon a midday concert for the vicar tells us the church, St Martin in the Fields, has an open door. We sit in the pews and listen to the soaring, roaring black and white sounds of the Messianen Quartet for the End of Time . The notes quiver in the sepia light. I watch rustling leaves through a stained glass window. What bliss is this....

the first day part 2

We then catch another train to our hotel. Emerge from underground onto Oxford Street - submerged by the throng of walking, talking, smiling, snarling, eating, crying, limping, striding, lonely, happy, dirty crowds of people. Feet hit concrete; sand, conglomerate gravel, pebbles, broken stone and slag in a mortar matrix. Our lungs breath in the fumes with joy, elation. We are free in the city. Anonymous. We have unacknowledged names. Our hotel is hidden behind a shop, opposite a haunted building with ragged curtains and smeared windows. The hotel has a doorman with a shiny black hat and a gleaming smile and a turning, swirling door. We enter the international, excuse me madam, just this way, may I take your bag, hotel. Our room is number 771. The mirrors on the walls of the lift glitter like diamonds.