Category: rag-pickings

All tracks, footprints, paths were gone. Buried. He had pitched a tent on arriving: how come it had not blown off? From inside, he watched the complex improvisations of the wind. He heard how it suddenly laughed with the sand, danced with the sand, amused and irritated the sand, amused itself and got irritated with the number of grains. And finally, it became, in its desire, a mad sand god dragging monstrous winged creatures off to conquer the world.

Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions

In a few steps, a familiar world made strange

Disorientation

Elemental vortex

Snow on sand births alien forms

Flecked horizon of Rothko greys

From a very brief walk along the shore at Limekilns, Fife on 28th February 2018, around 15.00. An encounter with the “Beast from the East”.

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Now playing: Chaya Czernowin – Wintersongs

The low instruments were moving like the slow search of a plant towards light – CZ

Tags 'Beast from the East', alien forms, beach, Chaya Czernowin, Edmond Jabès, Elemental vortex, Fife, Fife Coast, Fife Psychogeographical Collective, Fife Psychogeography, Limekilns, Murdo Eason, snow on beach, The Book of Questions

Field Trip Found Art Happenstance Language of Objects Observation Psychogeography Quote rag-pickings Signs and Signifiers Sounds of Spaces and Places

The City Speaks

Aerated Waters

Marchmont, Edinburgh

P e r s e v e r e

Marchmont, Edinburgh

Not so Chic

West End, Edinburgh

‘Zona AntiFascista’

Patrick Geddes Steps, Old Town, Edinburgh

‘Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio’

Newington, Edinburgh

ARE

JELLI

Cowgate, Edinburgh

When the inside becomes the outside

New Town, Edinburgh*

(*Intrigued by this one. You can still see plenty of bricked up window spaces in Edinburgh New Town, often attributed to window taxes imposed in the 1700s, although see comment from Calum Storie below. This one looks like a cast has been taken, delineating the fan light and window frames. The inside reversed to the outside. Shades of Rachel Whiteread?)

Now playing: Jon Hassell – City: Works of Fiction

Tags Aerated Waters, Chic, Cowgate, Dead Kennedys, Edinburgh, erasure poetry, Ghost Sign, graffiti, Joy Division, Marchmont, New Town, Newington, Old Town, Patrick Geddes, Patrick Geddes Steps, Transmission, West End

Encounters Found Art Happenstance Language of Objects Observation Poetry rag-pickings Signs and Signifiers

Transitory Islands

Foregrounded over the Forth

An archipelago of transitory islands

A solitary tree, inhabits the island

Island of the hidden lagoon

(Love) Island of the heart

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The ‘Transitory Islands’ pic was a fairly random phone shot from crossing the Forth Rail Bridge by train – a journey undertaken many times. Perhaps this chance encounter pulled something, initially unseen, out of these raindrops:

Serendipitous encounter No. 1: (On twitter @gawanmac asked: “it just me, or is that archipelago humpback-shaped?” A delicious coincidence as a number of humpback whales had been seen in the River Forth that very week). Is that also a gull masquerading as an eye?

Serendipitous encounter No. 2: playing Julian Priester’s Love, Love and drawn to the cover which I hadn’t really looked at closely before. A view reminiscent of the outlook, crossing the Forth Rail Bridge by train, where the gulls are often seen flying below you. Some disturbance in the water, have we just missed a humpback whale breaching?

Now playing: Julian Priester Pepo Mtoto – Love, Love

Tags Firth of Forth, Forth Rail Bridge, graffiti, imagined islands, islands, rail journey, transitory islands

Encounters Happenstance Observation Poetry rag-pickings Signs and Signifiers Symbol

We Can Only Be Onlookers

The call precedes

the chorus of arrival

A delphian chant

from an ancient score

We can only be onlookers

Line

of the long

low

swoop

Ascending

over the Forth

Carried

on song

– Fading – – faint

– – – far – – – – beyond

Our horizon

We can only be onlookers

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Limekilns, 4th February 2018

Tags Fife Coastal Path, Fife Psychogeographical Collective, Fife Psychogeography, Firth of Forth, Flying geese, geese, geese chanting, Limekilns, Murdo Eason

Field Trip Observation Poetry Psychogeography rag-pickings

Impossible Textures of the Sea / Light Fizzles

Post author By From Hill to Sea
Post date 08/02/2018
No Comments on Impossible Textures of the Sea / Light Fizzles

On the last day of 2017, the impossible textures of the sea

A full moon emerges

rises, observes

Constant flux underfoot, new paths

Sustaining coastal energies, wind, sea spray

changing colours of the tide

Cloud and sea – a mirrored

chiaroscuro dissolving

the lip of land

Grounded exhalation

silhouettes of breath

etched on the gloaming

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A week earlier – 26.12.2017

Bookends of light

fizzle into folds of darkness

Half a silver lozenge, to pluck from the sky

We leave it to the nightwatch(er)

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Taken from a series of short walks around the West Fife coast during the last week of 2017. Putting this together left an initial conundrum. How did I photograph a full looking moon and half moon less than a week apart? I posted the question on Twitter and thanks to Portals of London (@portalsoflondon), Jennie Murray (@lithgaelark) and MAW Holmes (@MAW_H) for the clarification. Basically I had taken a cycle at 29.5 days and halved it instead of taken a quarter to move from half to full. (new – half – full – half – new). However, possibly preferred Paul Kenny’s (@jmarmaduke) answer of alchemy.

Now playing: Ketil Bjørnstad, David Darling, Terje Rypdal, Jon Christensen – The Sea II