01:17 a.m.
So You got hacked and now my phone is dead from following an email link which came late when i was weary and trusting You and i forgot to remember You’re a virus leaving me unable to communicate with those who don’t follow late night links sent from idiots whose idea of fun is tying up time in online bondage time that could have been spent communing with me... You’re a digital virus rendering me mute You should have called instead. sandie zand, 01:17 3rd Feb 2018
Hot air
breath on ice
melting
melting
this is how it goes
vague white fading
to colour and
the world righted
in a handful
of cracks
and this really is
how
it
goes
when breathing
hot air onto ice.
we will find time, of
course, before the melt
to write
about the beauty
of Chione’s touch – oh
such divinity in nature –
and exalt perception’s
glistening, how it
invites us anew
to capture, contain,
describe, admire,
explain…
bring meaning
share…
we will share
oh god will we share – out there,
beyond our sphere, reaching into places which
should be out of reach but are not
– and in this sharing,
this caring if you like,
(you like? yes, you like)
others will
see
just
how
special
we are.
but we will still
blow hot air on ice –
we will write our world
(Photo by Marcus Löfvenberg on Unsplash)
1984
“If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.” George Orwell, 1984
Was looking through some old diaries – 1980 through to 1990 – “what was I doing on this day in…” being the question idly to mind.
In 1984, my old banger of a car was in and out of the garage throughout April (a Mini van, with a number of bus parts on it, as my then boyfriend worked for his family’s coachbuilding company – recall having had a bus reverse honk fitted to my indicators, in fact… amusingly noisy for a small car). Anyway, clearly that month my little car needed work, and the following was the bill:
Exhaust: £20, Engine Mounting: £30, Tuning: £15.50, Suspension: £14.52
Wow. Can’t even contemplate what that bill would come out at in today’s money. (That said, £80 spent on my car in one week in 1984 would have felt slightly painful! Probably hence the diligent entry of the figures).
The three diaries in the picture represent 1984, 1985 and 1986. (apologies for blurring out my hugely interesting entries… protection of the innocent, and all that jazz 😏). Party years – my God but each week is filled with events. What blissful freedom exists when one is 20-22 yrs old.
My Diaries of the Past are in no way literary works of art (not journals, merely a litany of “places I need to be/was”), and I’ve often regretted never keeping a proper journal, but it’s still heartwarming to glance back through these things and I’m glad I kept them, scrappy little throw-away items that they are. They reside in my Little Box of Special Things, along with a few treasured letters, some photos, tickets and invites… I maybe look at them once a decade. It makes me smile.
I keep a more dedicated, expansive journal now – and have done for the past two years – a little late to the game, and no idea whether that will induce the same smiles when I’m 92 (should I ever reach that age!!). Think perhaps not – there’s no innocence, no blithe freedom, in my entries as ‘responsible adult’.
Though am sure there’s one or two bits in them that’ll make me smile, one day… 😉
Flashbacks in colour
Spencer pours another whisky. It leaps up the side of the glass, pitching over the edge and trickling down his hand. His clean hand. His neat, manicured hand. There was a time its flesh was seldom seen, when he could move through days and nights without pause, his skin an extension of each worked canvas, its colour echoing progress – Prussian Blue, Viridian, Indian Red, Mars Violet, Ivory Black. Always ivory black.Those colours no longer grace palette or skin.
Those colours belong to another time.
He stands behind the glass of the locked door and watches the movement of others. Holidaymakers propelled by forced jollity from shop to shop, activity to activity, meal to meal, weighed down with bags of beach hut aesthetics compulsively acquired for an urban setting. The wrong shades, the wrong light. They’ll never understand beauty as context, arrangement, balance, harmony. Year upon year they will remove pretty pebbles from the beach only to later wonder how their beauty expired.
sandie zand 