Sunrise from the bottom of the garden. The house is divided into flats. I'm on the ground floor facing northeast. 

Horizontal sunlight reflected off a painted pot onto a white Hebel block. This wouldn't occur during the middle of the day. 

7:30 Sunrise continues. Cool morning light against the house. 

Saturday morning, 7:00 A.M.

Sun coming up in a clear sky. A blessing following yesterday's rains. Looks like I can finish cementing the patio.

Friday Afternoon

Friday Afternoon, 3:30. There's more light now. Notice the difference? 

Friday Morning, 6:00 A.M.

Rain. Early morning. It looks like September is going to be soggy and cold rather than clear and dry like the last bit of August. 

Thursday ...

Dappled sunlight on the newly-mowed lawn.  

Wednesday Post

Wednesday 5:00 PM 

Tat For Art

This one is about art. My art. The art I invent but have not built. It's all here in my head, and as I go clinking around the web, I find more bits of it.

This art is about extending the art other people have left behind, and it is distinct from the art that is original in some sense or other. At the moment I have one piece, the inspiration for this invention. It's a photograph of a stack of blocks. The blocks were once part of someone else's art, but I collected them after he was done, and have attempted to create something as an extension of the former work. The blocks are now in my side yard, having been arranged several different ways. Occasionally I see other bits of discarded artwork and wonder what I might do with them. Usually I have no ideas, and have no way of putting a plan into action. So the invention remains unbuilt.


Today, after deciding that it's time to check out the neighbours, I clicked successively on Next Blog, flipping pages one after another; skipping any with black backgrounds (with one exception); skipping most of the foreign-language blogs; skipping the ones that seemed insubstantial in one way or another. Of the few that made me stop and take a closer look, only three made me want to set them aside for future reference. If you follow the new links on the left side of this page I think you will see why.


One of my cyber-neighbours is a fellow named Michael Winter. The headline to his blog is written in third-person, like a bit of PR copy. Turns out it is a bit of PR copy, because Mr. Winter is a published writer, and this blog functions like a bit of publicity for his latest book. It is somehow a travelogue and a memoir about his time in Newfoundland. Since July he has posted incidental stories from various places between Luton (England) and St. John's (Newfoundland). The latest entry (Saturday, September 11, 2004) has an air of closure to it, as though the blog was about to be set aside.


More than one entry has an air of finality to it, as he passes through places with a sense of departure. So the whole blog is suffused with this sense of things coming to an end. I guess that's why I started nosing around a bit more, trying to figure out what was going on. But then I noticed the comments. There are not many, only five, but they are interesting in their own right. One is from an earlier acquaintance who would like to re-establish contact. This is poignant, of course. In this case it is also public. It suggests that as one episode ends, an earlier episode returns. After the end, a beginning.


Another comment has been retracted by its author. Someone who came, said something, changed his mind, erased it, and left the envelope. A fragment left behind. I'm looking at it the same way I look at old letters found in abandoned factories and I'm beginning to wonder if the entire place is going to be left like this; if the place is already an empty house.


If so, there's my next art piece. It involves blog-squatting: appropriating excess site functions for oneself, generally the comment sections. Having looked around at a few other blogsquatters, it's pretty clear that none of them have moved onto an abandoned artist's site and continued to develop it, to extend it artistically.


I suppose that one way of approaching it would be to use one particular blog as source material. For example, with Winter's blog, his themes of closure, of travel, and maritime Canada could be carried through in a series of comments about those same things, or deviations from those themes. This would be both sympathetic and creative. There are, of course, other things one might do with an abandoned blog, such as using a whole series of them in a game of blog tag. It too would be creative, but not necessarily sympathetic.

T-T-T-Tuesday

Tchunk. T-today starts with a stutter. Awake, then asleep, then awake. It's raining. Miserable and chilly. No reason to get up. What's on my list? Ascertaining the dire state my finances. Writing letters to people about attending a conference next year. Laundry that won't get done for the rain. I haven't thought of anything else yet. Cannnot go outside to work on the patio or garden. Have a small stack of papers I'll look at later. Once I wake up.

A visual metaphor for Monday morning. Sun coming up, looking good, but still fuzzy. 

Monday Morning Blog

Sometimes I have nothing to say. But I've gotten into the habit of writing something while I wake up. It helps get my brain in gear while my body does its transition from sluggishness to mobility. So the challenge this morning is to say something of passing interest to anyone else. Id est, it will be short.



It's a Monday. That could be a topic of interest. This is the Monday morning blog. It sits in the same mental space as Monday morning hangover, and Monday morning Quarterback. Are there any other categories I should include? No? I can't think of any either. So, what's my definition of the Monday Morning Blog?



Brain not quite ready for this. Therefore it must be part of the definition - in a not quite ready for prime time way. Rough around the edges, and some way into the middle as well. Still in thrall to the weekend? Some memorable blog that keeps coming back for more, but which has to be suppressed in the interest of getting on with the day job? Check. Coming up with a list of things that need to be dealt with this week, some of which might make memorable blog material? Ditto. Plus the list of things I didn't get done over the week end? Check. Wondering what is in store for me today? Who is going to write, who is going to come by with some request, or about unfinished business? Yes. Each of these things. So I better get on with it. Heh. Just like that. I'm off.

One of the advantages of living in Birmingham is the opportunity to buy rotting fruit at really cheap prices. This suits my budget so I do it pretty much every week. A dozen avocadoes for £1, 80% of which turn out to be brownish-green mush inside a black husk. 3 pounds of tomatoes for 50p, most of which are just fine. 10 peaches for £1, some of which are good and juicy, others of which are rock-hard and will rot before they ripen, and some that are either dry or mealy. A carton of jalapenos for £1, all of which get microwaved and frozen. 10 fresh figs for £1, one of which was under-ripe, mealy and flavourless, two more look and smell funny, and three of which - so far - have been delicious. 

Splendid Subtlety

Birmingham has some splendid buildings, including this one, the Victoria Law Courts. I pass it on my way to Aston University, and this time, while thinking about things of interest to photograph, realised that the facade is not brick, but tile. These tiles are both generic and custom-made (bespoke). Some of the bespoke tiles are extraordinary in their complexity, including these curved windowsill tiles, and the precisely molded columns on either side.

In addition, the tiles have developed a subtle coloration over time. There is just a hint of verdigris in the tiles and the mortar - although this is somewhat exaggerated by the camera, which has added a blue cast of its own. Nonetheless, the tiles absorb and reflect light in a very nice way, giving the building a faintly hallucinogenic glow.

Part of the facade at the Law Courts.  

Spirit of the Highway

Between the Law Courts and Aston University is a highway called the James Watt Queensway. It is one segment of inner-city post-war highway variously called the Queensway, the Inner Ring Road, and the Concrete Collar. At some point, city officials realised that this road was an obstacle to access and growth, and have demolished and rebuilt a big chunk of it. This particular section looks a lot better, and surprisingly, gives pedestrians priority over cars by putting in a button-operated traffic light and crosswalk. However, they have also done some silly things, which are, not surprisingly, a magnet for my attention.



This statue has to be the sillest. The people in charge of choosing and siting this thing have somehow managed to create a visual statement that is probably contrary to their intentions. A Freudian slip of sorts. And it is altogether possible that I know the people involved. So I will try to be considerate of their feelings....


The statue is of a naked woman. This in itself is questionable, with regard to the perpetuation of cultural stereotypes, where a naked and presumably fertile young thing is put on display in a symbolic affirmation of, say, um, life-giving qualities? Youth? Sexuality? Appreciation of the female form? Or is it simply a sanctioned form of lechery? I can and do appreciate the sentiment, and the rendering, but at the same time have to ask why. I have to ask why this particularly generic figure of a certain physical ideal was chosen rather a figure with a more specific symbolism. I know that in may instances, cities have collections of dis-used artworks that need a new home. So maybe this statue had been commissioned and built for a now-demolished courtyard, and the site designers were somehow coerced into using it here. In that case there should be a little plaque - and maybe there is - saying that this was rescued from obscurity blah blah blah.


I also have to question the siting. This is where the social significance of the thing shifts from the questionable to the bizarre and explains the inspiration for the photograph.


There are several easy interpretations of this arrangement. First we have a naked woman in a deserted space. The plaza is empty, the road is too. She is on her side, dipping a hand into a pool of water. The juxtaposition of empty space and a naked, supine figure reaching for some water immediately brings cartoons of Death Valley adventurers to mind. You know the ones. It's always a man, and he's wearing a hat with the brim pinned up at front. He's got months of beard, his clothes are in tatters, and he is crawling toward a water hole. Change the detail a bit, and it's the same scene. Because, after all, who is going to approve a statue of a raggedy man dying of thirst outside one of the city's finest buildings? So, in the truest Hollywood tradition, we substitute the ugly main character with a beautful young thing sure to bring in the punters. That's one of the easy interpretations. Another one involves the juxtaposition of this nubile figure with the highway, as though she were a patron saint of sorts.


A digression here. Do ideas about naked hitchhikers come to mind? Do you recall an album by someone from Pink Floyd with an image of a naked female hitchhiker? One of the worst album covers of all time, and a crap tune, from the sound of it. A mess. So what is this about? Is the plaza designer a Roger Waters fan?


We're getting some mixed metaphors here, which make it difficult to understand exactly what this scene is meant to convey. We have the naked, supine, thirsty and desolate figure next to a highway. Is this a metaphor for the barren highway - that a pedestrian could die of thirst beside the highway? That the spirit of womanhood could meet her demise here? Or, on the contrary, is it meant to be celebratory? That the setting is like a beautiful woman sipping fresh water from a natural pool? Hmm. What is this woman doing here?


If this were the fountain of youth, I could understand having a highway, a law court and a university next to it. It's logical. Maybe that's it. Maybe the statue is meant to alert travellers to the restorative and enlightening qualities of the place, lest they pass by in ignorance. It's the equivalent of those huge Dakota billboards announcing the distance to Wall Drug, so that even if you were dying in the desert, you would know exactly how close you were.

Spirit of the Highway