Magritte and the Ginkgo

What is it about the cloven-hoof of the Ginkgo leaf and its saffron-colour in autumn that makes it so appealing; or is it the age of the species, over 250 million years, which tugs at us?

Magritte's Golconda comes to mind in some of these pictures, though my primary aim this time 

was to try and capture the dance of leaves on a blustery day:

From a floating world

Spoilt for choice this time round, and the whole 'frozen in mid-fall' fascination reminiscent of Tarjey Vesaas'
 The Ice Palace,  which deals with mourning and the our attempt to freeze time in order to hold onto lost loves.
Having figured this one out, the leaves suddenly seem more cheerful in their suspended state!

The hunter in us

A leaf and its reflection, seen from below

Do floating leaves elicit the same wistfulness as falling leaves? I have been meaning to find out all week, but by the time the pool emptied today, there was little light left, and I had to work hard to get my small leaf, no bigger than a 50 pence coin, inside the frame. The slow shutter release proved to be a  challenge, especially as taking shots from the bottom of the pool upwards sends the leaves drifting on turbulence.

I'm not happy with the results - underexposed and unsharp, but I caught the mood, which is possibly even more melancholy in these water-shots, and tantalisingly surreal.

What I really enjoyed about today's shoot was the honing of my hunter's instincts: mind fixed on the prey, nostrils flaring for light, pupils calibrating exposure, heart-beat steadied (no idea why, perhaps not to alert the leaf?!), and breath held for each shot. Concentration so acute that I had no awareness of the cold (both water and air were chill), nor of time. But then, that's what I love about concentration, the way it transcends time and incidentals to focus on intent. Photography definitely brings out the hunter in us, and sometimes, even though we come back empty-handed, the experience is too good to miss!

Forever suspended in mid-fall

Peer Gynt and Proprioception

L'heure bleue (blue gloaming or the photographers 'sweet hour'), seen from the back of a Tromsø bus.

It's ages since I blogged, though not so long since I swam, mercifully! No pictures to show for my indoor swims, not even with Sindre and the usual suspects in a pool apparently blessed by the most beautiful views (yep, I'd agree with that, although it was pitch black beyond the diving board!).

So today's theme is a butterfly exercise I've been practising all week in which you spiral forward by kicking your legs, smoothly turning as you do so, some 2 or 3 kicks each as you face up, sideways, down and round till you've done a length or ten. Whereas in most other sports we orientate ourselves according to the ground and gravity, in swimming we only have our own physiological feedback to go on, and a small bias in any one direction causes a cumulative deviation from the axis. I have no idea why this spiralling is so gratifying - probably because it exercises parts of the brain other mischief doesn't reach - but it has kept me happily turning round and round like a propellor on the central shaft of proprioception.

Which in turn reminds me of the current FB discussion with AC friends about Peer Gynt who, I insist, is not the feckless scoundrel he's made out to be. Or if he is, then I am too, for we share much in common: we both keep going round (whether ourselves or the world), we both attempt to stay true to ourselves as we do so, and we are both inveterate dreamers. Besides, how could anybody who elicits such beautiful music be all bad! (Performance of Grieg's Peer Gynt)

Peer Gynt's shadow striding round the world, self vanishing into a halo of dreams,
green trolls and blue twilights just a few winks away!

"A memory of being 10"

Adelina in the Adriatic. Her birthday today: 10/10/1986

I came across a note-to-self written by Adelina on a trip the two of us made to Dublin in 1997. In it, she confronts loss, lamenting the death of her paternal grandfather, the passing of her own infancy and childhood, and then, addressing her future self, urges herself to include her current self in her affections,  just as she is now including her family and friends in her all-embracing love! 

In a very small tear-stained hand: "Here are some tears because of Ankong, Mum + Dad + Dublin"

Notice that, true to tradition, we went swimming, which allowed Adelina to claim that she had been to Ireland twice, the first time when she disembarked on the tarmac, the second time when she landed on the shore. Who am I to quibble with her semantic pedantry!

Photos taken from inside an Art Museum when we realised that Adelina could impersonate a painting on the wall!

And here, finally is a poem to celebrate her birthday and her funny little note. It offers a recipe for how to write a 14-line poem without ever bothering to pen more than a couple of lines yourself ;)

Love, Adelina

Dear Adelina, you write

to yourself, if you still have this

when you grow up, don’t forget …

and you list all your loved ones, first

and foremost NEVER forget your brother.

Lamenting the death of one grandparent

and the dying of another, you add:

I miss being a baby and a little girl,

and then, a love-surge sweeping time away

– for what is time to love

or self to rippling selves – 

I hope you won’t hate your childhood and me,

before signing off: Here is a memory

of being 10 in Dublin. Love, Adelina Lin.

I had hoped to load the 'rippling selves' with lots of meaning, but got rather hijacked by raspberry ice-cream. No doubt Lina would have approved ;)

Lens-waves

Trying hard to create a magic island out of Queenford, but there's no recreating Tromsø!

Hard to remember that these waves fit into the 1cm
of my camera lens!

24 Little Hours

The bag-lady travels in her pyjamas!

The sun never stops shining in Tromnsø, nor we 3 goons smiling :)

Sindre-sized bed

Bespoke-style bed-head!

The smiles were prompted by my 'goodbye', the arms by 'see you again soon'.
Is this a case of 'skrekkblanda fryd'?!

And yes, Sindre and I did find the time for a marathon swim session with Gillian and Vidar
(no cameras allowed, obviously :)

Submerged Empires

Queenford Lake on a sunny Sunday morning, reminding me of Magritte's 'Empire of Lights'

I did a couple of laps in pensive mood this morning, waiting for that moment when one's centre shifts from the world above-board, with its clamour of breath, sight and sound, to the otherness of submersion. What is it about breath suspended and the senses stayed that releases energy? Maybe just the trance of getting into one's glide. Maybe also the recognition that with the chaos and cacophony of yet another start of term, silence and focus are set to sink along with other lost Empires.