Skip to main content

Sunset in pictures and a few words and a few quotes


Don't walk behind me; I may not lead.
Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Albert Camus


Be my friend. Just take me for a walk. Please. Or I'll have to take myself for one. And then I won't have a friend -





Four-legged-friend discovered yesterday that he could hold his lead in his mouth. It happened by accident. There was something dangling at mouth level that hadn't been there before so what was a dog meant to do. It tasted leathery and smelt of friends' hands. Then, he appeared to realise what exactly it was that he had in his mouth. And having never done this before, he brought it to us looking for our hands, as if to say take it and take me for a walk. 
I thought you couldn't teach an old dog tricks. Four-legged-friend proved that wrong. Even if seven is not old old, it is pretty old in big-dog years.

While Four-legged-friend was happy to walk with a friend, Bertie Baggins was taken for a shimmy by Littlest. Oh yeah ...






Littlest who's never been one to stick to the common path - instead striding out across the road less travelled - the road not previously travelled by anyone, unless that anyone is a tractor driver.






In life, as in stomping across an actual field, 'If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.' Barak Obama


And the truest quote of all and the one that fuels this blog - 


'All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.' Friedrich Nietzsche


Shadow pictures; I'm always taking shadow pictures. They are more anonymous for the purposes of a blog and I think they are a little bit arty; is ethereal too big a jump - pictures that hint at the person without showing the person, that capture only their shadow - a fleeting, temporary but essentially unique and unchanging thing? These five long skinny figures are us stretched across the ploughed field - like the mysterious ebony Makonde figures of African sculptures - all leg and short body and interlacing togetherness.






Our shadows lengthened as the sun bit a chunk out of the horizon






Before setting (behind Littlest)






Sunset: word jumble that might be a poem or might just be a word jumble

Dragged below a distant hill and
Cusped
in outstretched hand,
the dying sun -
blinking, burning bright - is
colour-sucked 
by hungry clouds once grey, now
dipped
in golden light.
Dreaming summer murmurations,
distant, dipping, earth-bound flock -
soaring, spinning, 
sudden dropping,
settling 
as a breaking wave 
on new bared soil;
a memory dancing briefly, 
skipping stirred up thoughts, then swiftly gone.
Fine ash of autumn stills 
with sudden sharpening 
winter chill.
And dimming light at dusk
sends our shadows running home.






One final quote on the subject of walking -

'If you are seeking creative ideas go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.' Raymond Inmon

 Angels whisper at sunset too.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#
Post a Comment
Read more

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful.  Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten!
Post a Comment
Read more

Confetti for the brain. A little bit of history regarding a use for holes and a couple of quotes.

Confetti - noun: small pieces of coloured paper thrown over a bride and groom following their marriage ceremony. Also the bane of church yards and wedding venues - who wants to exit church after their favourite spinster aunt's funeral and slip on the papier mâché mush of last weekend's weddings, or step, in your wedding gown, onto a pink spattered step when your colour theme is lilac? Confetti - derived from the Latin confectum, meaning something prepared. Which suggests that there is something missing from the traditional wedding rhyme 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue ... something prepared.' How about something shared ... declared ... or ensnared?? Nature's confetti is all over the ground at this time of year - The garden, footpaths, and pavements are covered in blossom snow. And, when he falls asleep beneath the apple tree, it speckles Four-legged-friend's black coat. The confetti we know today - bits of b
Post a Comment
Read more