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Monday, May 7th, 2012
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6:23 pm
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Upwards At 45 Degrees
The Journey to Find the Hidden Reservoir in the Hills
There was a commotion outside the bathroom window this morning. Amongst a furious flapping and the cries of the blackbirds, a bird was pressed against the wire fence with its wings out, desperately trying to fly through solid metal. It only took me a second to recognise that bird as a peregrine falcon. I ran around the house to see what was going on, and by this time the falcon had adjusted its route and was now involved in a standoff with angry blackbirds. The falcon had obviously flown in with the intention of attacking the blackbird nest but very quickly found itself in an unfavourable position. It was chased away successfully halfway across the village shortly after.
( Upwards At 45 Degrees )
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| Saturday, May 5th, 2012
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9:50 pm
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10:26 am
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| Sunday, April 29th, 2012
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6:30 pm
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| Friday, April 27th, 2012
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10:00 pm
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| Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
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10:20 pm
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| Monday, April 16th, 2012
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3:17 pm
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Captured in the crowd... Dan in grey holding his scarf up and me to the right
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| Sunday, April 15th, 2012
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10:08 pm
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An incredible day out at Hampden today...
And this is someone else's video that I found that shows you exactly what it was like to be part of.
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| Friday, April 13th, 2012
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3:56 pm
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On Tuesday, after fighting through a blizzard coming over the hills, I broke down in Gifford. A broken fuel pipe spilled a good £30 worth of diesel all over the High Street. On Tuesday afternoon it was repaired. On Wednesday we got a flat tyre, and ended up having to get two replaced. Any lingering doubt that we needed a different type of car was dispelled by these final straws. My parents offered to help us out with the shortfall in a trade-in, and today we viewed and then purchased this little Jimny, the smallest 4x4 known to mankind.
Other than not being black, it's pretty much perfect for us.
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| Sunday, April 8th, 2012
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10:50 am
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| Friday, April 6th, 2012
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9:10 pm
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Bass Rock from North Berwick beach
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| Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
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10:22 am - The Longformacus Spring
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10:20 am
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Just when I was talking about spring arriving...
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| Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
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11:28 am
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The long dark is over! With the changing of the clocks comes 6 months of light; we leave home in daylight, drive home in daylight, and the evenings will get longer and longer until the peak of the year in June, when we can expect 17 and a half daylight hours per day. The sunshine that has accompanied the clock change has made the revolution complete. I've eaten lunch outdoors every day, and the last two nights I've been able to come home and wander off into the woods with a book.
There are differences there; some trees have been storm damaged, some snapped right through the middle, some entirely uprooted. I lay down on a gigantic log that must have taken at least 50 years of growth. I read my book to begin with, but in the end I found myself just gazing up at the treetops, their empty branches against a deep blue fading sky. You can hear every movement of wind through the canopy, you can sense every rabbit and pheasant, hear the lapwings in the field. When you walk there is a crunch of abandoned seed casings. Perhaps most beautiful of all, the grass plants. When you walk on them a few paces and then stop, you hear a kind of a high-pitched groaning, and if you turn around you will see the grasses returning to their upright position as if they were made of memory foam. The very floor is alive.
I wore my new leather jacket, I'm trying to break it in. It's for when I get my motorbike license. It's different to other leather jackets I've had, it has more utility to it than style. I removed the extra protective padding from the lining until they are needed, but other small details tell you this is not a fashion item. There are no studs to keep the front flap open, it hangs there awkwardly, determined to close itself. The shoulders, even without the safety padding, are puffy. And because it's new, the leather is stiff, unyielding. I don't like new clothes so much. They seem silly, they look silly. It's much better when something is worn a little, it looks better, it feels better. It has a story, a history. When I get something new and it shines, I can't wait for the time when it has worn down a little. I've never bought a new leather jacket before.
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| Monday, March 26th, 2012
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9:29 am - book fevah, book fevaaaahhhh
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| Wednesday, March 21st, 2012
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2:54 pm - Vastness and Sorrow
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Last month I published a book of photographs through Blurb. Doing it this way is far too expensive to make it available commercially as printing it onto the premium paper brought the cost up over £75. It's really just a project for myself, but I do like to share things so you can have a virtual flick-through using the full book preview option with this link.
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| Monday, March 19th, 2012
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9:54 pm
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Watch Water Reservoir, Lammermuirs
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9:51 pm
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Edfast Plantation, Middle Rig, Rawburn, Lammermuirs
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| Thursday, March 15th, 2012
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11:30 am - Waiting For The Days
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The closer you get to something, the more impatient you tend to become. That's definitely been the case as the spring arrives slowly. It's already light when I leave work, but not yet by the time I get home. The seasons which never affected me at all in the city have such a huge impact on life now; I don't even think about time in months, hours, years, just cycles. When the darkness lifts until late, late into the evening I can go out into the woods with my books and my camera again, I can walk up the road to the ancient hill fort by the river.
A few years ago Lowell told me that he'd taken all his DVDs and videos to the pawn shop. The whole lot. From an entire wall to nothing in one go. When I asked him why, he said it was because it was weighing down his soul. I wondered at the time if he was being serious, it's often hard to tell and I didn't know him very well then. Later I came to realise what a wise thing this actually was.
Our house is stuffed full of objects, possessions. There's nothing wrong with possessions, they're nice to have, but each one should have some purpose. It should add something to your life. An item is a quality item if it does that. A quality item doesn't have to be something expensive or perfectly made. If you do a lot of digging, a spade that feels just right for you is definitely a quality item. If you spend all your time indoors, that same spade would not be a quality item, it would be unnecessary. If you can take an item away from your life and it would make no real difference to you, then what you have is not a quality item. But it might be for someone else. So selling it on ebay is an ideal solution - it can go on to someone who has use for it, you gain the space it took up, and you get money for it too. You may be able to transform 10 non-quality items into 1 quality item, or maybe you use it for living. At the minute, the sheer volume of items in our house definitely weighs heavy on my soul. There are no spaces, only clutter. Entire rooms are basically unusable. 90% of it isn't mine, my possessions are not great in number, just books and clothes and films, some pictures and decorative items, some saws and drills and screwdrivers. Not a lot else really.
Items also mean distraction. Choice isn't always a good thing. Even within my limited possessions, I have a lot of books, and a lot of them I haven't read. If I sit down to read a book, at least some part of my attention will always be on the fact that there are other books I could be reading instead. If I watch a film, it's the same situation. But I want all of my attention, 100%, on just the thing in front of me right now. If I read a book, I want to properly think about the words themselves, the sequence and flow, the meanings and themes. That's why I like it in the woods so much, I can be free from distractions, it's just me and whatever is directly in front of me.
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| Wednesday, February 29th, 2012
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4:36 pm
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I took a book out of the library that puts forward theories that our universe is just one among a infinite number, that existence is a multiverse. It goes through a lot of quantum mechanics, which is fascinating but completely mind-exploding. I won't even attempt to explain any of it here because it's so far above my head that I'd only embarass myself, but needless to say you are soon led to question pretty much everything you thought that you knew and understood. Human life seems all the more miniscule and pointless among it all, but perhaps more amazing too.
There is another question in life about what is real and what is illusory, in terms of my own life. What moments would lead me to use the probably unsatisfactory definition of 'real' to describe them? I suppose they are moments of experience, of being open to experience and having that experience come through to you. I've repeated this and similar things quite a lot over the last few months, but a strange thing has been happening. From my position of a cynical, closed individual who doesn't know how to open up to experience again, I have, almost without knowing it, been drifting steadily towards the opposite end where I want to be. It's a jagged journey, some days more closed than others, but generally the motion is towards this goal.
I was 9 hours into putting a fence up with my dad in my garden. "Are you getting fed up with this?", he asked. I shook my head, "No". How to describe what I felt in that moment? It was total peace. I looked out over the garden, to the trees all around, to the sky, heard the birds, the wind, distant voices, distant engines, experiencing it all and taking it all in. I had lived an entire day moment to moment, without preconception or frustration, just calmly working through what needed to be done. It was the 'quest-based' logic I thought about before, it was the openness to experience that I thought about before, everything was, and still is, coming together.
I held onto the plastic handle of a basket that contained Hamish. We took him down to the vet with what we thought might be an infection, but they had become immediately gravely concerned about his heart. The heartbeat was too fast, they told us they were very concerned about hyperthyroidsomethingorother, that it was going to lead to kidney failure and death, immediate blood tests were needed and we should monitor him very closely. Sitting in the waiting room I tried to picture life without Hamish and I couldn't. It was just inconceivable that he wouldn't be there. I realised then that every moment cuddling up with the cats, or playing with them or talking to them, is a real moment. These are the moments that have genuine value in life, because there is a limited window which won't always be there. I should give a bit more thought as to what makes up a 'real moment', and try to have more of them.
(As it turns out, Hamish's liver is fine. His thyroid is fine. His behaviour has returned to normal, so it may have been a lot of fuss about nothing)
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in_thy_bounty's journal
