The February Experiment

During February, I am attempting to blog a description everyday, with prose and pictures, although I will let myself lapse into poetry if I really feel the urge. My blog, my rules! This is a lead up to the A-Z April blog challenge which I have just signed up for. The 1,000 Miracles In One Day will continue, maybe offline for a while, but they are there and I will find them. Meanwhile, here's the story of February.

The second month of this year arrives, in late winter style, on a coating of fine ice and chilled mist. There will only ever be one February First 2012, and if that is not impressive, this year the month is trailing an extra day, a magic day that appears on our calendars once every four years. Things we don’t see every year we can remember to hold in higher regard.

This, the first day of the second month, calls for our attention with sharp air and soft horizons, a low pinkish sun lighting the cloud line behind the intricate lace of leafless trees.

All day the sky is clear and half of the moon stays out to see it. As the sun drops it melts to a sticky circle of orange, a colour that smudges a warm watercolour line behind stark inked twists of moor land tree, turns the landscape into an illustration for a fairy tale. The orange circle overfills and pours away into the dark ground. Half a moon is fixed in the deepness of the night. I imagine werewolves only able to grow half of a wolf-beard, asymmetrical beasts.

Comments

Contact Pants Conundrum

There is weather today, I do note it: take a few moments to reckon the size of a cloud (big) and the frequency of rain (sporadic.) Centre of my interest though is a stack of magazines. Not the fashion kind. This is martial arts research. I'm not even sure what it is I'm looking for, but intuition calls loud. A range of old adverts skew some amusement. Contact pants, for example. Pants are not trousers where I come from. They are underwear. Professional contact pants: improved smirk value. But why would a person be likely to purchase a grappling hook and a lock pick set? For specialists and hobbyists only, the blurb assures. Guidance on the pheromone spray that attracts women against their better judgement? I doubt it works any more proficiently than the mysterious potion that defines your muscles while you sleep. But, then: I wonder is some sprayed on this paper? What was my intuition thinking, making this ghastly shout… Tea break time. There's a lot of words...

Back From The Future Blog Party

Another joint blog adventure- if you want to see who else said what the list of participants is here . The premise is this: 'You're up before dawn on a Saturday when the doorbell rings. You haven't brewed your coffee so you wonder if you imagined the sound. Plonking the half-filled carafe in the sink, you go to the front door and cautiously swing it open. No one there. As you cast your eyes to the ground, you see a parcel addressed to you ... from you. You scoop it up and haul it inside, sensing something legitimate despite the extreme oddness of the situation. Carefully, you pry it open. Inside is a shoebox -- sent from ten years in the future -- and it's filled with items you have sent yourself. What's in it?' Here's how I imagined it: Before dawn? Shadows outside, first forming. Sleep has gone, I don't know where. Coffee I can find. All the way from Machu Pichu, this fair-traded pack. Scissors are in the drawer, which ...

A Happy Kind Of Idiot

I am watching hazel leaves shimmy in a breeze, they are keeping time with the buzz of nettle stings that run from my fingertips to my elbows. It feels like I'm wearing gloves made of needles; why didn't I just wear gloves to clear the nettles from the raspberry hedge? But I like to know the plants, how they grow, how they smell, how they stain and sting, what bugs shelter in their leaves, what grubs and gastropods nestle at the roots. How the roots sneak under weedblocks, moon-pale, and over open ground where they are purplish, bullish. I like the work to affect, I like interactive life. It has a little pain and a lot of interest. Not all the nettles are gone, of course, some must be left to house caterpillars, and they are a healthy vegetable for people too. Today’s crop is for compost though, to feed the soil, the miracle stuff from which this abundance grows. How could I not wish to be close to that? At home I have a shower, scrub my sore hands- and still I sm...

Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Search This Blog