I am a ghost

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Do you sometimes question if you exist in the way you’re supposed to? I sometimes wonder if I’ve died already and what’s wandering around as me doesn’t look completely human anymore.

Today I was feeling faded out anyway, still ill with some bizarre virus that gives me a low level fever and makes my face feel swollen up from the inside. I haven’t been outside my room except to get water and occasional snacks, but I needed more food, so I went out to the supermarket. And on the way people were staring at me oddly. They often do stare at me oddly, it’s true, not nastily, just curiously, but today they weren’t even trying to hide it.

Then I was in the supermarket, using the self-service screen and it wouldn’t recognise my finger. I was pressing and pressing different buttons on the screen, trying to get something, but nope. So I called the supermarket guy over, I know him, he’s usually really friendly, but he barely acknowledged me. He pressed the button, it worked first time. So I think it’s me, what have I turned into? Am I just waiting to fade away?

 

Word of the day (I think this one may be a joke): Gawdelpus – helpless person

 

Don’t get sidetracked…

Posted on by inkbiotic

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More words of wisdom from the mind of an algorithm (they know us so well)

The little sleep I had last night was loaded with dreams, the kind that vanish from your memory as soon as you wake, but leave you with a feeling that something happened. And that sense keeps coming back, almost like a memory: Something important happened. But no idea what. Since it was a dream, I’m assuming it was about zombies.

Anyway, once I reached five am I couldn’t stand being in bed any longer and went to the window and saw this sky

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So that was sublime. I hope you’re all having a beautiful day too.

‘The door is wide and open, don’t go back to sleep.’ Rumi

Word of the day: Hypaethral – roofless; open to the sky

All Seeing Eye

Posted on by inkbiotic

 

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Today Mike found a drone lying in one of the gardens at work, under an Acanthus. I’m not sure if it got out of control, flew into the garden and then the owner couldn’t get in to retrieve it (the garden is gated) or if our residents are so rich that the owner couldn’t be bothered trying to find it. And I’m not sure what they were using it for. Do people fly them for fun like they flew remote controlled planes? Or only to take photos where they shouldn’t?

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The managers in the office are trying to spread the rumour that they’re using it to spy on us. I really hope Barry doesn’t find out about this, he’ll probably assume that it’s mine and I’m watching him. If he can believe helicopters are spying on him, then being paranoid about a drone is easy.

Word of the day: Bombilate – to hum, buzz or drone

The Alley of Sinister Children

Posted on by inkbiotic

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I stumbled down a back street today and found myself in a tiny road with many flowers and statues of children hanging from the balconies. Each one was dangling from a different house, so this is a small of community who got together and all agreed to decorate their homes with strung up children. At first I found it interesting, but I didn’t like the one with no hands, bit too much like a Saw movie to me. I didn’t hang around very long after that, the vibes were not reassuring.

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Frieze! Or I’ll shoot!

Posted on by inkbiotic
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A handy scarf hugging a tree

Alien Resort was asking about the picture I put up yesterday. It was one of the sculptures from the outdoor art Frieze at Regent’s Park (I turned the picture upside down because I liked the way it messed with perspective). Anyway, I thought I’d put up the other pictures from there, since it was an interesting exhibition.

Quite annoying though, despite cordons around most of the art and signs saying Please don’t touch, people were lifting their kids over the ropes and letting them climb all over the art. I like that the public feel less intimidated by art and rules now, but it seems like only the intimidation was stopping us from trashing everything.

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Ivan Argote – Bridges (We Are Melting)

^ This is part of the sculpture that I used in yesterday’s photo, there were four of these bridge-like structures with words that didn’t make much sense on them.

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Jaume Plensa – Laura Asia’s Dream

I thought this was beautiful, so peaceful ^

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Tracey Emin – When I Sleep

^ I’m not usually keen on Tracey Emin’s art, but I thought this captured a feeling well. And I liked the way she was just lying on the grass, as if she’d collapsed there and didn’t want to get up.

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Barry Flanigan – Composition

^ A rabbit, leaping through the air on the back of four elephants. This looked like the penultimate scene in a kid’s book.

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Huma Bhabha – Receiver

Well, this disturbing hunk of chunk looked like it would step down and start thumping people. Just looked up the artist, and she’s great. May do a blog about some of her art soon, it’s the stuff of creepy dreams.

There were other sculptures too, which I’ll probably post up at some time. I hope you enjoyed these!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Me vs. reality

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Shaily Agrawal made the suggestion that maybe our impossible-to-set clock was tuned to the wrong timezone. Aha! I thought, that’s plausible. But having fiddled around with it today, I see that every time it’s reset it chooses a different time. Sometimes ten minutes out, sometime six hours, sometimes three hours and twenty-four minutes. As a kid, I had a digital watch that was erratic like that. Every time you pressed the light switch the time changed. I even wrote it into one of my books. I assumed then, and am assuming now that it’s some kind of code. A way that technology can communicate with us.

I should probably also report, that I found no evidence of a portal opening or mysterious happenings at the time the clock chose. And no further evidence of a zombie apocalypse occurring. In fact it felt like a completely normal day, as if no doom was impending at all and only ineptness was lurking round every corner. But that can’t be right.

Word of the day: Fey/fay/fie – doomed, under the shadow of a violent, foreseen death

The Secret Garden

Posted on by inkbiotic

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I think, think, I just caught a bumble bee trying to lay eggs in the crack in my window sill, is that possible? She was sitting on the crack for ages, waggling her abdomen about. I helped the fluffy lady out the window and couldn’t see any actual eggs, so I filled the crack in with bathroom sealant. Not exactly high-class DIY, but it’s all I had and the whole window is such a mess anyway, I can’t make it any worse.

There’s a small road off the main road near my house that looks like it might be a short cut to town, but whenever I spot it I’ve been in too much of a rush to go down there. Finally today, I did.

It contains a beautiful, cared-for garden, filled with flowers and mosaics. A small oasis in a grotty street off a grotty road that I had no clue was there. It was like cracking open an ordinary stone to find a carving inside.

Whenever I take the time to go exploring I always find amazing things. That’s one thing I  like about this blog, it makes me look.

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Freaky deaky Clematis

Posted on by inkbiotic

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I’ll be honest, this photo was taken a few weeks ago. Or months. I don’t really pay attention, time does its thing whatever. Anyway, I found this while weeding in one our more exotic gardens and asked around my colleagues to see if anyone knew what it was. We thought because of the leaves, it must be a Clematis, but none of us had seen a flower like this.

After I got home I did some googling around and discovered this photo, so the centre of Clematises do do this, but is it normal to do it this much?

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The Googled photo From here

 

Like the segments of an orange. Barely a flower at all.

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This has just been a week when I’ve proved how little I know about plants, right?

London’s many stone babies

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Somehow, Hamoudi has now got Jinjing into the drumming. This morning they were emptying out all the kitchen cupboards trying to find makeshift maracas (rice in tupperware) drums of different sounds (buckets, saucepans and the bin) and cymbals (they hadn’t figured this one out, but mugs, metal spoons and a frying pan hanging on the wall were all possible candidates.)

This led to Neville being annoyed and slamming doors, playing his music loudly (Miley Cyrus???) and singing.

So I ran off to central London.

Wasn’t sure where I was going, but ended up at Bank, first spotting this weird doodah on top of a building. Couldn’t get any closer to work out what it is. A machine anteater? A caterpillar tank? An alien invasion happening very slowly – like Tripods, but not tripod shaped? Any ideas?

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I know this doesn’t help much. But, what the fuck?

Anyway, then St Paul’s appeared.

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One thing I love about London is there is no uniformity to the buildings. Shiny new chrome can be next to a dome over 1,400 years old.

St Paul’s, like many English buildings, is filled with statues of toddlers and babies, which suddenly occurred to me is a bit weird.

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Especially when so many don’t look very happy.

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The carvings below were especially disturbing to me, since they seem to show two winged babies being whispered to by evil ghost babies.

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Look!

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I know some of you (Calmgrove?) are knowledgeable about old buildings, so maybe someone can tell me a reason.

The din had calmed down by the time I got home. Hamoudi had a plan about going busking with their makeshift drum kit. I suggested they got Neville to sing with them and he was quite enthusiastic. Sorry London.

 

 

How to be happy?

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Nothing’s happened for me to write about today, things are calm and quiet, but I have had one thought on what it takes to be happy:

I don’t believe there’s a universal secret to happiness, we’re too varied, one person’s blissful life is another’s miserable cage. So there is no rule book or map to follow, you just have to use trial and error to work out what’s right for you. Experiment, explore, ask questions. And then, when you’ve found the life that gives you peace and meaning, you have to develop the strength of mind to ignore all the people telling you you’re wrong about it.

Hopefully tomorrow there’ll be the usual ridiculousness to write about, I’m not much of a philosopher.

The image is a face sculpted in sand taken next to the Thames.