years of nights

how i feel about taking passport-style photos and packing, choices and changes being the double-edged knives of always.

disassemble the parts and frame

(by Juliane Eirich)

and sometimes days crush together the wonderful, the mundane and the completely horrible, and sometimes you can sense the physical distances. but it's a mixed bag of nuts, this whole thing, and i guess it's autumn and life's still changing.

In Autumn - Mark Irwin

The extinct animals are still looking for home
Their eyes full of cotton

Now they will
Never arrive

The stars are like that

Moving on without memory
Without having been near turning elsewhere climbing
Nothing the wall

The hours their shadows

The lights are going on in the leaves nothing to do with evening

Those are cities
Where I had hoped to live.

stun gun lullaby

(by Chrissie White)

wat ik geleerd heb -
alles went,
de wereld is mooi.

tremble and shake

lately, listings -
university readings, black-ink drawings and darker days of cold-tipped fingers and freshly returned expanses of days and borrowed time.
himalayan shakes, levees breaking and metaphors surround.

in lighter news -
the brilliance that was this art-cum-everything exhibition ('art meets science and spirituality in a changing economy'), unexpectedly seeing a band i knew from my mid-teen years play memories at a concert of another, discussions of countries and borders, good weekends and golden carriage national holidays.

and left-overs -
still searching for scraps of writing, substantial in the literal and figurative senses, and spreading the autumnal love to the soundtrack of flute exercises, led zeppelin and anything icelandic.

made you a map out of blood and glass

hello himalayas, how i miss you.

sums and syndromes

(source)

When I'm not busy (attempting to begin) reading university-assigned literature, reshaping hearts and dreaming, I like to go to concerts. Here's Sin Fang, an Icelandic singer/band, whose gorgeously drifting set I watched yesterday evening, accompanied by awkward hipsters and a lovely coyear, amongst other things. Drifting in reality too, the pokey/atmospheric size of the venue meant that we met him afterwards, obtaining us doodles on our records and accents in our ears.

suns and sleepless nights

Meet Darjeeling, captured on analogue in the shrouding mid-morning mist.
Another leg of my post-grad trip, this accompanied by a Polish coyear and pots of Ladakhi apricot jam, this was definitely one of my favourite places in India. Admittedly very backpacker-friendly (we ran into several batches of travelers at our hotel, breakfast cafe and odd British pub) and a little bit of a slop to get to (a rather uncomfortable overnight bus and a shared jeep up the writhing and well-used mountain paths), the hill-station was charm itself, a series of buildings climbing the Himalayan foothills and fading into acres of tea-plantations.
We spent our handful of days there visiting the zoo, where we ran into a strange man, dressed in a horrendous checkered shirt, pointy green shoes and with a following of demure women and a film camera, wandering around the temples in the nearby town after stocking up on an amazing Indian sweet at the local bakery, and attempting to get to Tiger Hill, where the view of Kanchengjunga, the third highest Himalayan mountain, is allegedly the best. Sadly, the last activity involved a four o'clock rise, which we just about missed, and jeepless, we walked the deserted streets and peered into the horizon from the miniature train station instead.
One night, we chanced upon an adorable/amazing restaurant-cum-creative studio, run by a couple interested in design (architecture and clothing), and spent many hours there, watching Oprah, eating brilliance on plates and discussing Le Corbusier's Chandigarh. High teas in sumptuous hotels with gardens filled with white dogs and tea-shopping alongside Indian tourists followed this, and then we were off again, back to Calcutta (this time by train, luckily), where I would be told I looked like I was a Darjeeling local.

these are the days of miracle and wonder

(enroute to our temporary ten-day home in Leh, during the dawn of my lengthy summer holiday)

evenings out, days of work and bicycling, the sun warming the autumn dusk and the crown of my head - and still no words up here. i think of india, about india, about what happened in india, with fondness but perhaps also like a series of old photographs now; having the people who were part of it so far removed makes the entire thing feel more like a brilliant indie film, complete with a great soundtrack (thanks to my more-musical-than-me friends), late nights and a low budget.