Eclipse

 

 

Today there was a partial solar eclipse over Edinburgh. I captured it here – it actually looked better through thickish cloud, dimming the blinding brightness.

 

 

When I saw this rainbow haze, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me (or on my camera, since I was looking mostly at the screen) but there it is, the light dispersed and beautiful.

 

It’s been quiet here. Things are happening behind the scenes. Talks of cover, plans for a reading tour – this latter ephemeral. But so is an eclipse. A passing (and in this case, partial) moment. When people say that reality is dull, I wonder if they’ve ever given themselves time to look up. Or had time to go looking. There’s a total eclipse every few years in different parts of the world. There’s Spring, or if there are no seasons, then other things – coincidences, faded memorials, poems, stories. A poem is real, a story is real. A man folding up a piece of paper and putting it in his pocket, a dog running through a park so fast its legs blur. All that chaos, stillness and wonder, and not infrequently.

Where I go

I’m heading off to the hills with D and A, to camp and walk in the woods. So this space will be quiet for a few days. Before I go, two nice things:

 

1. My next Supernatural essay is going to be posted on The Female Gaze later tonight – you’ll be able to read it on that main page once it goes live. It’s about Episode 11 from Season 3, ‘Mystery Spot’. My essay likens it to Groundhog Day (for reasons that will be obvious) and also to Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One Art’ for perhaps less obvious reasons. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and if you’re on Tumblr, share it around.

 

2.  I tried to buy Casey Hannan’s excellent Mother Ghost today, wily-like, by ordering with a gift card from Blackwell’s Bookshop. Sadly, they weren’t able to access it, so I shall have to order directly from Tiny Hardcore Press when I have the money to spare. How do I know Mother Ghost is excellent? I’ve read some of the stories – check out the link to Hannan’s blog over to the right>>> and click on his sidebar to immerse yourself in their smoky dream flashes.

 

I hope you enjoy whatever the weekend brings you, and that I’ll be back on Sunday with photos of the dark woods and the foggy sea lochs of Argyll.

December reads

 

I know that lots of literary sites and blogs are putting up their Best Of 2012 lists about now but I am in resistance! The year is not over til those bells chime on Hogmanay. With that resolution in heart, Endless Reads 2012 continues into December. So far I have read Somewhere (which I will review shortly) and I’m closing in on 1Q84. After that, the titles above, so thoughtfully complimentary coloured:

 

The Missing Shade of Blue by Jennie Erdal, a philosophical mystery published by Abacus – the title comes from a philosophical problem posed by David Hume regarding the conception of a colour you have never seen (it’s a bit complicated to explain so here’s the wiki). It’s set in Edinburgh, which makes it I think the only first-read of the year set in my own city (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was a welcome re-read).

 

The Light and The Dark by Mikhail Shishkin (Quercus) is a book that has not yet been released and that I have acquired through the generosity of Blackwell’s on South Bridge’s Christmas Book Quiz. D and I inadvertently showed up when the quiz was starting, and decided to join in, though D was there  do some preparatory work for an interview and is not overly interested in contemporary fiction. Our team, Book Shaped Heart, came 8th out of 11, which was not too shabby considering the difficulty level. Because it was Christmas, everyone who participated had the chance to choose a book from a few boxes set up in the back and this was my choice – from the blurb on the back it seems to be a kind of Russian literary version of the film The Lakehouse. Which I haven’t seen because Romantic films aren’t really my thing. But! The book might be anything, really.

 

The Last title is Another Country by Anjali Joseph (Fourth Estate). This was sent to me by a friend, and the author is a friend of his. It’s about a woman in her twenties living in Paris, London and Bombay. I have high hopes – it was savaged in The Telegraph for being (shock horror) more about character than plot, and seems to focus on un-belonging and rootlessness which I think I will enjoy.

 

Whether I will get through all of these titles before the bells remains to be seen, but I’m going to have a good time trying. They’re all newly published (or in the case of the second, unpublished) so I’m still keeping to my promise of reading new, vibrant things. What will Endless Reads 2013 bring? I haven’t decided yet. Should I have a theme? Would that be too artificial? What would you like to see?

 

LDN

 

 

Tonight I am off to London by sleeper train. My plans are made, my maps arranged, my playlist (curated by D) is yet to be lined up, but still some hours yet.  I’ve been looking at the map of London, thinking of place names and reimagining them as the first things the pop into my head: Piccalilli, Barbarossa, Houston Station, Calmdown. London is a strange country to me.

 

There’s a dingy light here in my flat from the rain, and the shush of cars and buses going by outside my window soothes as much as it worries me. I’ll have to go out shortly to pick up my coat – my big Afghan coat of unknown provenance that I’ve had since I was at St Andrews.

 

I can relish such details of dress and book and music and the places where I’ll be going tomorrow, alone and with others. In the past week, I’ve been writing an outline and editing furiously, and now it’s time to slow, to get on the right foot and to stow things neatly in my bag so I’ll be free to wander and to look. I’ll be a set of eyes and a shape moving through streets, or having the streets move around me as I sit inside a cafe by a big window,

in good light (I hope).

Summer on the out

 

 

I love hydrangeas for their colour, for the fact they hold that colour into Spring some times, for their hugeness and sturdiness, for the fact they are not a single flower on a stalk but a profusion. The picture above was taken on a street that is near us, full of honeysuckle and yellow rose growing everywhere, and lavender. A summer street.

 

Sometimes it’s hard here to tell when Summer is closing down. The weather so variable that it fools you into thinking the end has come. A day of white sky and damp cobbles. Or a cold sweeping wind from the North East. But I think that time has come. It is a matter of perspective, but I think so.

 

I’m making plans for the Autumn, and craving it. Not colder weather – since the drop off is from the dizzy highs of 19c to more like 13, 14c – but crisper air. Gales coming in. I like a buffeting wind. I like to see the leaves crickling down the street. Hydrangeas remind me of this cusp-time, before the proper cold of late Autumn. Remind me of our wedding, in the beginning of September three years ago, when we were in the North of the country, in a wooden lodge by the silver-sanded sea with family and friends, and flowers and wedding cake homemade by my mother.

 

September only has this one date to brighten it,  though October is full of plans. October will see us having another go at the 48 hour short film contest, see that flash fiction of mine published, and me heading London bound on an overnight sleeper, to meet my agent and catch up with good friends. London is like another world, a city state, and I  always look forward to visiting, and always to leaving it again.

 

But what will fine September bring?

 

Fresh Tracks

Something old infused like basil in oil, a tiny leaf of something crushed and perfuming…

This is how it begins:

When you make the move into a landscape, you take pains to name the most insignificant parts. All the big, obvious landmarks have been named. Eagle rock. Achachork. Death trail. Ida, though, gives names to the hidden, overlooked. Desert trails through the brush, too small to have garnered notice. Mines. Maybe they have names, but no one remembers them. Potholes. Gentle inclines in the road. A tree with a particular look to it.

Her own name blurs. Is it Ida? Aida? Ada? She must work out what country she came from, and what this town is called. She has to seed the place, so that later, when the research is done, it has accumulated meaning.