My wardrobe is primarily greys, blacks and blues, but the kids live in a riot of colour. I think they would hate to live in a world without the red end of the rainbow.
postaday
Cover Art
I’ve tried my hand at cover art already, although if sales are anything to go by it isn’t my strong suit. The flowers are from the Munstead Wood rose in the garden (affectionately known as Mundungus).
The Hajj cover went through several iterations, eventually the beveling on the text helped it stand out while giving me a colour I could use for both the title and author.
There was a meme that did the rounds on the book of faces in 2009 which was a bit of fun. If you are stuck for ideas try this:
1 – Go to “Wikipedia” and hit Random Article or click
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to “Random quotations” or click
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to “flickr” and explore the last seven days or click
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
Remember to watermark the picture to credit the original artist!
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Art and Light
I love Bloomsbury. In between the tree lined streets and the garden squares you come across the oddest of shops. In that magical way of the best odd shops you feel like you have never seen them before, and that they have been there forever.
This time is was L Cornellison and Son an art supplier for the very serious painter. It had an air of Ollivanders, and the costume shop from Mr Ben, where turning a corner could take you into another world.
It also struck me as an interesting place to study light – that essential medium for both the artist and the photographer.
The staff were a little bemused that I wanted to take pictures, but kindly let me do so as long as I didn’t snap them or any of the customers, which was fine, my interest was in objects not people.
A case in point was this case, which I half expected to fly open with a selection of wands ready to choose me.
I kept the light deliberately low on these brushes, there was something about the auburn bristles that was very compelling.
I liked the play of light against the different colours in the bottles, the only slight change to the setting of the shelf was to twist the Copaiba Balsam to hide the price, because that cheapened the whole composition (although it was ruinously expensive).
A drawer full of pastels to round things off.
End
Diamond ring refracted and reflected
A bit of photoshopping to bring out the play of light in the actual and the reflected.
I see you in a dream
This one featured in The Door I Never Opened. It remains one of my favourite pictures from my college days. Surely if the Latin quarter of Cowley car plant could be the city of dreaming spires, our little town on the edge of the fens was the city of perspiring dreams.
Dreamy or just dreaming
The dreaming god – which was also the feature image for Older Gods part 9
Signs of Hope
A rainbow as a generalised sign of hope and good fortune, and cranes at work as we haul ourselves out of recession.
Our Works and Days
What we lost.
The interior love poem
the deeper levels of the self
landscapes of daily lifefrom Buried 2 (iv) by Michael Ondaatje
There is little that survives of my grandparents on both sides, or indeed my father. I did not meet any of them. What I have pieced together is through the distorted reflection of what my mother remembers as seen in others. My nephew has something of the precision of my father, my cousin shares the earnest, naive idealism of my maternal grandfather, I have something of my maternal grandmother’s gift of making.
I walk and laugh like my father, my brother inherited his enormous sense of responsibility.
It is these touches that endure, fragments of other lives that find their reprise in a syncopated, mutated form generations later, only recognised by those who form the bridge and can remember the stories.
The ankle bracelets in the picture belonged to my maternal grandmother. Little else survives from that era. My wife was given these when we married, and as we are preparing wills she needs to decide where they will go next. Fortunately there is another pair of similar weight from my wife’s family, so we will be able to arrange something equitable for our two daughters. To them my grandmother is just a portrait that hangs in my brother’s house.
More difficult to bequeath will be the family treasure. My brother is custodian of the decoupé art of my ancestor Abu Jaffer (and before you begin planning a heist, it’s not actually worth anything). The family legend is that the girl Abu Jaffer loved married someone else, and he spent the rest of his days a bachelor. There is some suggestion that he may have been a skilled poet, but among my ancestors that at least is not a peculiar distinction (if only a couple of poets could instead have been born with the ability to manage estates and make good decisions, but that story is for another day).
He had no children, he lives on only in these beautiful but fragile bits of paper, and a half remembered romantic tragedy. Or perhaps not, it has been remarked that most of my own stories are romantic tragedies. Perhaps a little of him endures in the family line after all.
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If you are interested in my writing please check out more here
Enduring Friendship
The remembrance of days, despite distance, time and tragedy. Rising above missteps and mistakes, a friendship that endures.
On Beauty – For Emily
“In many mortal forms I rashly sought
The shadow of that idol of my thought.
And some were fair – but beauty dies away”
from Epipsychidion – Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mirror mirror.
Beauty is momentary and lasts only in memory.
The perfection of form – being handsome/ pretty/ attractive – is a more common thing, lasting and yet more transitory. It is gifted by fate or genetics, sometimes with seeming randomness and abandon. Form can be grafted and crafted; pinched, plucked and tucked to create an image. Easy on the eye but appealing only to the cheaper senses.
Age can wither it, and custom will stale its infinite variety.*
Beauty is not a mundane thing of structures and symmetry. It is an energy, a crackle of lightning that can take any face, however pleasing or misshapen, and in the moment lift it to something instantaneously striking. It is the product of a rare and perfecting set of circumstances in conjunction: a febrile mood in which the mind is receptive to influence; a connection that understands: for a breath, a moment, the subject and object are in perfect harmony; a catchlight in the eye; the reflective properties of skin; the sudden breeze that plays with an errant hair.
It is the piece that for a heartbeat fits seamlessly into the puzzle. It is an ache of loss to realise what is missing.
And then it is gone, all that is left is the recollection and a sense of abiding affinity. The moment is lost but the memory remains. From then to the end of life and time the person retains in your head that stain – indelible, neither age, care or privation can change that sudden shift in perception.
It is the fertile ground in which love can grow.
END
* A deliberate misquote from Anthony and Cleopatra 2:2
If you are interested in my writing please check out more here
Ali Abbas 