today:/the anniversary of my birth

...as my father insisted on reminding me every time anyone mentioned it was my birthday today. 'it's not your birthday. it is the anniversary of your birth [day].' yeah alright already! it seems, although i may be wrong, but more friends remembered this year. perhaps i have facebook to thank, or perhaps i'm entering another age when birthday's are once again noted. our mid thirties, sliding in to the two score years...everyone is busy with their own lives we need an excuse to get together now. a reason. what better than a birth anniversary, and of course, births, marriage and death...thank you to all who really did make this day special and one i will remember. 

something just out of frame

a pig in a box, a look off frame, something attention grabbing, something catches his gaze, something more important that his broken playdough body, what is it that only his small, dark eyes see?

search history

like but also not like

the process is the message

susan sontag's love of aphoristic thinking...

the shape of an echo

a digital echo to be precise. an online digital echo. jb -
in User Ruby follows Alicia's digital echo. what she finds there tells her much but perhaps her search tells her more about herself than she can ever know about the life she's been tracing. that life remains out of sight. behind the digital marks left there to be deciphered online. ultimately, Alicia remains unknown.

[extract from User, a novel-in-progress]

Prologue

For a short while, the living and the dead travel side by side.

When alive, neither Alicia or Ruby had any idea of the others existence. Not in any meaningful way. Their paths had crossed once or twice. They'd passed on the street, eaten at the same takeaway, were members of the same social networking site and even shared a no good boyfriend. It wasn't until Alicia passed on that they really got to know each other properly. 

You may rightly think, being dead at the time of their acquaintance, Alicia actually didn't get to know a thing about Ruby, but who's to say how long the recently dead stay with us? Or what they know?

paper love and origami shapes

love is like an origami shape

it has many folds

it takes time and patience

it may start out as light and fragile stuff

but soon, when

combined

pleated

folded

tucked and scored, 

it is strong

and can

withstand

anything

poem for a first 'paper' anniversary by sgyates

the power of snow

snow has a funny affect on people. today in the UK we experienced the most snow for 18 years. i'm old enough to remember the last time we had this amount of snow. it was my 19th birthday, i was living in halls of residence in camden, london. it was my first year at university [college london] and i walked with friends through the eerily quiet streets [no public transport of course] hoping that our restaurant would indeed be open [and warm!]. the bustling chaos of camden town rendered oddly mute. magical.  there was a rare sense of communion and community, the spontaneity of shared played. unsolicited play was palpable. having only recently moved to london from life lived in small towns and villages i was suffering from the seeming hostility and willful anonymity of life on the streets in the big city. suddenly all that was turned on its head. the hundred of images posted online today display that same excitement at the opportunity for a day out of routine. an other invitation for unsolicited play hungrily accepted. it takes so little to move us from our routines and social habits. certainly if the diversion is in the name of time away from work.