THIRD BIRTHDAY (7August 2009-2012)

JANUS

is the theme of the third birthday celebration of this blog, which I began on August 7, 2009 and was initially intended so that I might communicate with friends. It has extended well beyond my expectations and is now read by about a thousand people a week from all over the world.
My views from that first call to what is human has not really wavered, except that in writing the blog, which has been, in a sense, a journal of some of my thoughts over the past few years, our humanity and diversity has been revealed, and is again shown in the contributions made by the various artists and writers who have spent time contributing to this celebration.

Facing forward, facing away, facing inwards - a Janus situation, three faces as such in which one looks to the past and to the future, beginnings and transitions - gates, portals, endings and time. Many thanks to the writers and artists who have contributed to this celebration and embraced the theme. They breathe a welcome breath into this blog, which has been up and running for over one thousand days. 
 

I embrace the emphasis on the organic world that is obvious in the works by Tracey Lamb, Susan Hawthorne, Andrew Garton and Simon Park and the way that the writers and artists have emphasized our fragile relationship to it and it to us. This tenuousness is called to mind in both Cecilia White and Chris Barron’s separate poems that recall dust. The former invites us to consider everyday domesticity in relation to the disintegration of the body and the latter, which evokes death on a cosmic scale, but one that is brought back to earth and is nonetheless as natural and evidential as the continual degradation of the forest. The ephemeral nature of things is also considered by Werner Hammerstingl whose play of light on what appears as a watery surface speaks of transience and crossings. The immediacy of our lives and the role of ubiquitous media to create fear through things out of our control is aptly stated by Lisa Who in Suburban Lament, a landscape of tabloid headlines that highlights issues in our troubled times. Naomi Faith Bishop takes up one of those concerns in Boat People, a simple restating of the fact that desperate people place themselves in danger in order to gain freedom and Dale Chapman’s offering of BOMB, a Chinese alcoholic drink not only draws our attention to the dangers of over-indulgence and consumption, but evokes in a very direct way a fear of what we perceive as a powerful other.

Portal, door, portal. Tracey Lamb

EARTH'S BREATH

Year's Door

ear to light / standing at the year’s door

an insect fluttering inside / a frog at the year’s opening

in that tiny space / the space between

lacuna for sound / the scream of a tree frog

amphibious life / the gap the metaxu

in two worlds / Janus and Ganesha

door gods / inside outside together

dark with / light at its edge

ear insect fluttering / door frog screaming

batwings in a cave / trapped scream

one wing inside / one leg the other side

of the dark / body perched in the gap

flight to light / leap to dark

beating wings / bounding legs

panic in my head / terror in its voice

an echo / in the stillness

Susan Hawthorne (2009)

Two roads are better than one. Andrew Garton (2012)

KELOID ON MY SOUL 

The antibiotic Benzyl Penicillin has saved my life on two occasions. However, such were the amounts used to treat the infections that the antibiotic also destroyed a vital part of me, my personal microbiome (the bacteria that live in and on me). The treatment which removed my bacteria did leave behind a small residue of my biochemistry though, the 0.7% of me that can be considered to be truly human. Of course I have since been repopulated with bacteria but what has returned to replace my original microbiome, like scar tissue, has limited function. I am still alive and for that I am truly thankful, but I have changed, and I can’t help but feel that the antibiotic treatment has left a keloid on my soul.

Simon Park ( 2012)

Boat people. Naomi Faith Bishop

Portal. Naomi Faith Bishop

The Agony of Dust

looking under the bed

you recall allergies

to dust and Victorian portraits,

lino and gilding clash

putting you under pressure.

sneeze again and you might

release yourself

frame by frame.

look up! look up they say

but the walls have ears

turn away their faces

and you. domestic detritus

small dandelions of spent force,

stir briefly, as if meaning to

slump back to spectred thereness

worse than forgotten, ignored.

shifting the weight of air

history loses gravity

revolution turns on itself

and the dead. you remember

the living, sleeping above.

that is the agony of dust.

cecilia white

august 2012

April Fool. cecilia white

 Ianua of beginnings and endings

 Werner Hammerstingl

Dale Chapman (2012)

Suburban Lament, Part 1. Lisa Who (2012)

  

DAS SCHEIDE-KUNSTLER

To cross or spike the hub

here where we pore the planets rub

by moons outside ipseity

they whist our Janus fall

in crackled bits of morbidezza

Reflecting dust we are affined

by ash and attar woad and common heath

or ling that sheathes a violet hung

to thunder through the foxlight

Chris Barron (1995)

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