Notes of a different shade #1

Diva

I'm on a quest, a little adventure through leaves of haphazardly raked magazines of colour and gloss: seeking fragments of somethings to turn into some "things" entirely else and all born of waves of sound...

giving a face to the calls of some of the feathered ones around me: as I see them.

This quest came about following a recent visit to Zoe's blog and reading her inspiring post - it reminded me of my half-hearted attempts to paint such faces with words, so why not have a different attempt.

There are times - usually when I'm preoccupied with housework or garden chores - that the various calls of the birds blend into one vague background hum. But the more persistent of them will however, barge on through my wall of concentration; and it’s these calls that I'm attempting to give a face to. Over the years I've mentally pinned upon their feathers a human persona due to any individual characteristics.

Meet Diva, she was practicing one of her arias high in a tree when I started raking those leaves of colour and gloss....her face is one born of sound waves from oscillating lightbeams of metallicglass, sonic tangles cross pollinated with twists of golden zangles.

Think of a synthesized Maria Callas... it's a start

Illuminate the shadows

Shimmerglisten

Kj recently asked her readers what one word would you use as a guidepost for your 2012. My immediate word was: Sponge - I can soak up whatever comes my way; hold on to the good and squeeze the life out the not so good.

Only days in but I'm listening with my eyes, thinking with my tongue, speaking with my ears, seeing with my touch...

The very next post I read was Amanda's - Brigid and Imbolc which brought to mind light and shadows, beginnings and endings. Just now, as the great seasonal wheel starts to edge slowly towards the light in the north, in the south it edges towards the shadows where Lammas is observed by some.

I've borrowed the following passage from an interesting link I followed about the old ways and Goddess rituals here It fits in well with my current mood of thinking, waiting, sidestepping.

"The Crone – the Old Phase of the cycle, creates the Space to Be – (whereas the Virgin, whom we celebrated at Imbolc, after the Winter Solstice, is the Urge to Be; the Mother is the Place to Be). Lammas is the particular celebration of the Beauty of this Awesome One. She is symbolized and expressed in the image of the waning moon, filling with darkness. She is the Nurturant Darkness that may fill your being, comfort the Sentience in you, that will eventually allow new constellations to gestate in you, renew you. So in this celebration we will contemplate opening to Her – our fears and our hopes involved in that. She is the Great Receiver – receives all, and as such She is the Great Compassionate One. Her Darkness may be understood as a Depth of Love. And She is Compassionate because of Her dismantling … where we may not have the will. We do want to be ever fresh, ever new – it is not possible without the Wise Old One, who will mercifully shake us loose from our tracks."

Sponge who chose to be my word for the year has begun to seek and drink up words that spill into my days - I've started a Sponge Diary, which you may hear and see from time to time, as Sponge's fancy takes hold. First word to enter is:

Shimmerglisten
(Word no 32 from the 50 Words for Snow cd - Kate Bush)

and an equally wonderful description for my humid coated skin.

Sidestep the mundane

Lately I've been guilty of focusing blurrily: looking but not seeing, forgetting to sidestep the mundane of everydayness; for months my nightly dreamscapes have been barren, wonderless places too...

but,

with the rain has come visits from old thoughts of juxtapositions in the guise of characters lost from my dreamscapes reminding me it's time to sidestep again.

Watching Monday from the window

An overfull sky continues to leak its way through my days.

Drizzled upon these days are odd minutes delivering nothing more than a slip of silent drips, but they are in the minority: others band together with impatient seconds, until, as fully rounded hours, they unleash their song in rods of pure white torrential screams hard upon my frowning roofline.

Hitting the sodden ground, the rods of pure white song stir up trails of tannin tea from between the squelching, mulched, puddled toes of watchful trees...