artist

lost journal – the journal’s tale

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

Only slowly does it dawn on me
that motion has ceased.
It is silent for the first time
in a long while.

I cannot make a sound
to attract attention.
I wait so still,
hoping.

It is warm between
the Financial Times
and Vogue.
But I shiver.

Swoop, arms gather the
newspaper and detritus
of flight BA0589
from Milan Linate.
I slide out under the
seat in front of you.

Will they come with vacuum
cleaners?
Not this time.  I hear the
hum of new arrivals.
Distant first,
then nearer.

Am I going back to Milan?
I recall cosy bedrooms,
grand galleries
and a few moments at a café,
when I was loved.

I miss the motion of her
pen, the flicking of my pages
and the close attention of her
eyes rereading and sometimes
looking away.

I miss the triumphant tick
in a small blue box
the sigh of satisfaction
and the sometime quick
snap-shut of a distraction.

What’s that?  Far from being
cornered by another
bag, I am being retrieved
by a total stranger.
I hold my covers tightly
shut through sheer willpower
to no avail.

Alien eyes peruse my pages.
I hope her writing turns
to scribble just in time.
My pages are flicked back and forward.
‘There’s no address’ I observe
unnoticed.  Only ‘private’ and
maybe hidden clues, who knows?

With relief, I remark
a kind of gentleness of touch.
Hope glimmers – perhaps I might
be restored to my owner?
I know she is looking for me
amongst the other
lost possessions, can hear her
hopeful tap-tapping of her plea
to find me.

I am being
slid in
to someone’s business bag.
I smell leather and Apple.
My pages snag on chargers.
For the first time, I am afraid of the dark.
I want to go home.

And I know I won’t.

in the wordsmith’s workshop

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

Following a magical visit to the goldsmith’s workshop, now it is the wordsmith’s turn.

The wordsmith had visited the goldsmith’s workshop to help her with some writing because she does not find it easy to tell her story.

The wordsmith took the tools of her own trade with her to see the goldsmith – just a little silver laptop computer and a warm heart.  As the goldsmith talked, the wordsmith captured certain phrases, facts and stories.  Using questions wrought from the wisdom of experience, the wordsmith tugged at tales and pulled at pauses, and waited patiently in silence, knowing that in time precious nuggets would emerge.

Which they did, sometimes one or two, sometime more, with their own timing and rhythm as the goldsmith remembered, lit up, hesitated and shared.

At last the wordsmith shut her laptop, said goodbye and left the goldsmith’s workshop, ready for her own process of mulling, refining, and seeing what remained.

The wordsmith allowed the goldsmith’s stories to swirl around her imagination, and at last, sat down again with the goldsmith’s words, ready to start work.

As she pondered, she let the most important themes come to the surface.  Then she worked with them, adding little facts here and there from her notes; unwinding and bending phrases to become small facets of love and delight.  She brought the goldsmith’s passions and heart for people into a setting where they could be more easily spotted.  She highlighted the goldsmith’s bravery and pioneering spirit.

At last the wordsmith was finished.  She did a last check over her work, and then ‘ping’ sent it to the goldsmith’s team.

And then today, she visited them.

The goldsmith had loved the finished work.  It had helped her to recognise her own self, remember her great joy in her own work, its value and many riches.  It had helped her to see past the struggles and weariness, to regain her vision and strength.

The praise from the goldsmith’s team delighted the wordsmith.  She too suddenly realised the treasure of her work, its power to make things beautiful and full of wonder.  She felt encouraged in the middle of a day of challenges, and renewed for her own adventures into the unknown.

And now the goldsmith and the wordsmith are hard at work, in their workshops and at their desks, making…

found poem, London, winter 2014

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

I like my town

Art is a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

Back to basics.
Douceur d’enfance.

Today is a good day.
Live what you love.

She acts like summer
and walks like rain.

Art for all.
Discovery.

Let’s fill this town with artists.
Art is nothing without the gift

‘I love William Morris
as I love most artists who manage
to make their lives and work
completely part of each other.’

When William Morris lay dying in 1896,
one of his doctors diagnosed his fatal illness
as ‘simply being William Morris,
and having done more work than most ten men’.

Love is enough.

Own a masterpiece.

Welcome.

No peeking.

Skate.

He is like a tree planted beside the streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season,
whose leaves do not fade,
in all that he does he prospers.

‘Dying is as natural
as being born’.

The secret is out.

You are here.

Step into the adventure.

Thou God seest me.

A little patience won’t hurt you.

Notes on locations:  sign in Loft store, shirt in Loft, product in Loft, candle in Loft, art in Loft, art in Loft, Duke St Emporium, DSE, Landrover showroom, name of shop, sign in same shop, Anarchy and Beauty, National Portrait Gallery, cushion in NPG shop, sign in NPG, Jigsaw store window, Somerset House sign, engraving of Proverbs 1 in Somerset House monument, quotation attributed to Cecily Saunders, Kings College London, wording on a van, street map, advert on bus, wording above St Clements Danes church, sign on Tube.