Almost an update

[smokingboot]

Nope, can't do it; too much happening. Work is a whirlwind and I don't know where it's taking me; neither Kansas nor the Emerald City seem real any more. I am exhausted again, but such chums as mitchy, caddyman and colonel_maxim made my stay in London very sweet, with gentle company, good beer and very constructive advice. I have been well looked after!



There was a catch-up with old witchy friends totally sans lj, and a party at mamapusscat's, celebrating her birthday. She cooked us all the most marvellous west indian food, jerk chicken,rice and peas, plantains, salt fish and ackee...it came out somewhat late in the evening, leaving us nowt but the alcohol and the other guests to sate our appetites until its arrival; the result was very merry indeed. It was a good night, culminating in a cuddle party up around the fire pit at the top of the garden, only broken up by the cake stampede sometime pre-dawn.

I have made a new friend. I could not help it. I was determined not to, as he seems to have enchanted the entire tv station into following him around liking him. All he does is blink these gloopy blue eyes at everyone and somehow everything is OK. I was going to attack him on the subject of his goatee, a chin folly of extreme humour value, only to find he had shaved it off, robbing me of my greatest weapon; when in doubt, ridicule your foe into submission. Goatee-less, I had nothing to revile him with and tried to leave the snake pit, reeling from a near fatal attack of ingenuous nice-guy-dom. A few conversations later, we are friends. I am always a bit scared of very new friends; they are like new shoes, so pretty you can't take your eyes off them, but not entirely comfortable until broken down a bit you've got used to them So re new chum, must remember no pedestals, no disappointments when he turns out to be human, no being around too much and no invisible goatee pulling. I am generally quite lucky with my friends, but when I make misjudgements, I make really bad ones. The worst was someone I considered kin on a deep level who turned out to be over a decade's worth of wasted time, less kin than 'kin 'ell. Never making that mistake again; Still, you can't hold back for fear of the past...



I've changed. With the exception of Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott I found myself impatient with the pre-raphaelites, impatient with a lot of the paintings. My attention was taken instead by the William Turnbull exhibition. This was exactly the kind of art that irritates my darling larians; shapes that don't do or represent anything much, sticks and stones. And yet, the shapes were powerful. What is the point of art specifically about texture if you cannot touch it? The explanatory plaques talk about Turnbull's interest in 'mobile' sculptures; you have a horizontal log with a dip cut along it, and a stone you can place anywhere. So why can't we pick up the stone and place it? What is the point of showing me a line of hollows along the top of an egg if I can neither run my fingers between the grooves nor examine the smoothness of the rest of the sphere? Shapes and surfaces cannot be judged by the eye alone; touch is surely part of the process. Check it out, not so much the orange metal stripes at the top of the page, more the sculptures half way down; http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/williamturnbull/default.shtm

There was a piece of performance art, two pieces of film in a dark room showing palestinian teenagers dancing. I liked the music and fell asleep to it. I guess this constitutes a failure of the artistic imagination.



Other things? There were many and I can't remember them; I came back to find our bedroom painted a luscious shade of purple, crisp white and purple Egyptian cotton on the bed. It's a great improvement. I also discovered that our kitties are now proper grownups, with all that that entails. A bat, a frog, a bird, various butterflies all testify to their elemental cattyness. The past few days have been full of little deaths. I would be truly horrified if I wasn't so tired.

Now larians goes to the Gathering, and I wait here until I travel on Sunday back to London. In a minute I will book the train ticket, and then I will close my eyes for a long time.