Walthamstow Tapestry

On Saturday it was brilliant to see Grayson Perry's beautiful, huge 'Walthamstow' tapestry hanging in the newly refurbished William Morris Gallery. I had recently watched Grayson Perry's fantastic TV series on class taste, in which he observes the ubiquitous Morris decorations in the homes of the one of the middle class tribes along with the other identifiers of organic vegetables, Le Crouset dishes, the Guardian, recycling containers and full bookshelves. (Sounds too familiar for my liking) I long for more Grayson Perry documentaries, he is such an eloquent and funny narrator.

The William Morris Gallery sits in a gorgeous Georgian house where the Morris family once lived, in the middle of a moated park. We sat under a tree and observed with Perry's class lens the trendy young parents (we were guessing ex-Hackney dwellers). The tribe markers being skinny jeans and converse for the women and men with rolled up jeans, a scruffy band t-shirt and kid dangling off an arm nonchalantly while drinking a beer.

Pixelated nature

This striking image taken of the cells in a bee hive, show the patterns made by the variety of local plants and flowers harvested by the bees.

 
 
It reminds me of this stained glass window installation on the High Line in New York. The windows were made from pixelated images of the Hudson river. Beautifully murky!

Maya arrives

The slippery, warm entrails are slapped onto my stomach. As he cuts the cord I become two. My insides come outside became another. A pause as we sense each other, we feel our breath. Our skins fused together with warmth, blood and love.  Her lips tasting my skin, as I smell her hair. Cocooned in awe, we are floating. 

Now I am a deflated balloon, my belly wrinkled, the air passed into this new world before me. I am slipping into a warm sea of oblivion. I want my spent body to be swallowed up. I feel finished.

Her movement brings me back as a wave lifts me, flops me onto the shore, panting with exhaustion and relief. The warm sun rays of love prick my skin until I am glowing with peace and purpose. I feel complete.

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I dont want to turn this blog into a motherhood and babies space, but that was my initial reaction to my daughter's arrival. Sylvia Plath describes this with more elegance:

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival.  New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety.  We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses.  I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's.  The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars.  And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

New York Particulars

Working in another country is a great way to observe the small daily differences. I was working in New York in December to February and these are some of the Manhattan ways that I loved.

Cabbages as winter street flowers. I wonder if anyone ever eats them?

The trend for ordering ice coffee 'to go' in the freezing winter. Is it like hot tea in the desert?

Big breakfasts in diners - a perfect halfway between a cafe and budget restaurant. Here is where i ate frequently, on my way home from work. Also a good place to eat if your alone.

in praise of rain

The rain is falling in soft, fresh waves outside my window, and it soothes my soul.

Sadly there aren't many things I can claim to share with my uncle Ian, aside from being family. He is a talented and successful artist, writer and illustrator. He lives in west london, me in the east. But we both seem to share a love of the rain.

And the elegant Tiko Tuskadze who runs my favourite local cafe, Little Georgia, and I always greet each other with dismay when it is hot and pleasure when it is cool or raining.

Everyone else is complaining about the rain and the 'rubbish summer'. I find this disappointment so strange. We have had many days of sun this year - remember the blistering May? So why the expectation that these have to be clustered around a few months in the middle of the year? It rarely happens and you'd think we'd have clocked this by now. Anyhow, I think the pleasures of rain are overlooked.

A few reasons why I love the rain:

It is watering our lovely community orchard

Playing melancholy piano sounds great with the rain

It means I dont get red sun marks when I walk to work

It makes a calming ambient soundtrack for writing and reading

It gives me an excuse to spend all of a sunday watching films and cooking

It means I can actually get stuff done, rather than feeling i should be outside pointlessly flopping around in a park.

paper anniversary

This time last week I was trying to get to sleep with sirens skidding past my bedroom window and helicopters circling overhead.

It was our second wedding anniversary and we had decided to walk home after dinner with some friends. Tentatively walking down Old Street and Hackney Road the reality of the riots we have been glued to on-line suddenly turned my stomach and pricked my skin into high alert. All the shops were closed and the usual stream of wannabes coming out of the pubs were nowhere to be seen.

It was shocking the scale of the violence and how arbitrary it spread. It felt like the illusion of peace and stability was just the emperors new clothes, and that night it felt like we would remain insecure and scared walking home at night, gangs of feral kids and police powerless to control.

And it was confusing; community spirit was revealed in the Stoke Newington shop keepers protecting their livelihoods and in rival gangs who normally shoot at each other for crossing into the wrong street were joining forces. Initial empathy for a generation who have been abandoned quickly replaced with deep concern for the small shop owners and the people fleeing their burning homes. 

Yet how quickly we return to familiar and the predictable. How quickly its over and we have to remind ourselves it wasn't a dream.

I can't analyse why or what caused the riots or what the solutions are. Its complex and there is enough analysis right now. But it did remind me of this poem. Did the rioters in England in 2011 know what they are fighting for? And did the Latin American revolutionaries know what they are fighting for?

I'll never forget my philosophy lecturer at university spontaneously scrapping the set topic and railing against the introduction of the tuition fees, how he had to publish a quota of articles in order to pay his family bills, leaving him no time to 'be a good tutor'. He apologised, said it was an outrage. He couldn't believe we weren't up in arms, protesting, rioting for the poor education we were getting at rip off prices. And this was over a decade ago, before university graduated you with a £25k debt. Well I remember feeling ashamed and momentarily inspired. But as soon as I left the hall I was out buying records and dancing at what felt like the most important place to be while the world outside shaped our future.

Self Portrait at Twenty Years

I set off, I took up the march and never knew

where it might take me. I went full of fear,

my stomach dropped, my head was buzzing:

I think it was the icy wind of the dead.

I don't know. I set off, I thought it was a shame

to leave so soon, but at the same time

I heard that mysterious and convincing call.

You either listen or you don't, and I listened

and almost burst out crying: a terrible sound,

born on the air and in the sea.

A sword and shield. And then,

despite the fear, I set off, I put my cheek

against death's cheek.

And it was impossible to close my eyes and miss seeing

that strange spectacle, slow and strange,

though fixed in such a swift reality:

thousands of guys like me, baby-faced

or bearded, but Latin American, all of us,

brushing cheeks with death.

Roberto Bolaño

(translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy)

magic in the waiting spaces

I've just returned from a trip to Italy by train and recalled a time I was waiting for the eurostar.

 I was sitting reading the paper and drinking coffee, waiting for the platform to be announced. In front of me a tired looking, slightly overweight, grey haired guy was leisurely tuning his trombone. The next time I looked up he had vanished. I wondered idly whether this was a busker or just a musician very precious about his instrument.

A short while later the same man appeared in a garishly floral waistcoat, and started warming up on his trombone.

A couple sitting near him also waiting, the woman jokingly asks "Are you the travelling circus then?"

"I'm seeing off the train to disneyland", the musician replied, "The magic starts here."

"So do you feel magical?" she says.

"No. Been doing this for 15 years," and then starts up with his music.