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| Todays prompts, my lovely fountain pen, leftover stickers, folklore good luck leaf |
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| One of my favourite images from the film I took using a cheap plastic camera I bought from Primarni in the 'before times' - the camera has a fixed no focus lens, no iso setting or anything fancy about it all - it's just a shutter. I used 35mm Kino film from Lomography - which is film I got for xmas or birthday I can't remember which a couple of years ago. The image itself is of the stone bridge over the beck in Meanwood Park taken on a sunny day in late November 2021. As I write this I am struggling to manage my anxiety about the seemingly exponential rise of the new strain of Covid, the terrifying predictions of the numbers of infections, the uncertainty of what Omicron might mean on an individual level and the impact of what large groups of people having to isolate might mean. The fact that it's Thursday and so it's blog day is a good alternative focus. I am in the fortunate position of having had both my jabs and my booster but the uncertainty of the effect of the new strain has meant that the beginnings of confidence I was starting to work to reclaim a couple of months ago and the tentative steps I was taking to get back to a bit of the normality of a bit of the 'before times' has been replaced again by the fear, uncertainty and at times sheer terror of the start of the pandemic almost two years ago. I can hardly believe I have just written the words 'two years ago' but it is almost two years now. Two years of stress and anxiety and now it's back at the highest levels and having had a teeny bit of respite from it it feels all the more heavy and all the more difficult. And having stopped feeling quite so anxious and then that feeling being racheted back up again just shows to me how tiring it all is and what an impact it has and continues to have on so many people to say nothing of its effect my own ability to concentrate and complete tasks. It also makes the feeling of when will this ever end all the stronger and heavier. Plus I know people who are extremely clinically vulnerable and on a personal level as an asthmatic who has been hospitalised in the past with a respiratory infection I'm very frightened of becoming seriously ill. But I am ever mindful that I am in a comparatively really fortunate position compared to so so many and I remain incredibly grateful for that and fingers crossed that continues. Vaccine provision aside I say no thanks whatsoever to our shitshow of a government who continue to both disappoint and enrage with their staggering levels of arrogance, incompetence, corruption and mixed messages. And now so many of their crap decisions are coming back to bite them (not sacking Cummings for instance, the shortsighted stupidity of making masks optional, the awarding of contracts to cronies with no oversight to name but three) but also sadly us in consequence on the arse. So on a happier note I learnt a new piece of folklore whilst on a walk this weekend round the bridlepath with a friend - namely that if you catch a falling leaf it will bring you good luck, and I managed to catch one. I try not to be superstitious but I think despite my conscious brain being fully behind rationalism and atheism it's partly a subconscious throwback to my strict roman catholic upbringing and its attendant belief and hope in things you cannot see and do not exist. Plus when things are bad - as long as you are doing the rational things what harm can it also do to touch a piece of wood or cross fingers? I am still resisting the lure of submarine catholicism (ie it surfaces when you are in trouble) as I do not believe in it and have zero time or respect for any kind of organised religion apart from the Satanic Temple. Anyway I caught a leaf (pictured above) and wished whatever good luck and fortune it may hold to my two friends currently dealing with serious illness - same as I did with the penny I found on the floor and picked up mentally saying 'see a penny pick it up and all the day you'll have good luck'. Its the same when I see a robin. Robins are supposedly carriers of loved ones souls as in the rhyme 'when robins appear, loved ones are near' and whilst I know each time I see one that it does not contain my Dad's soul or the soul of other dead loved ones I do find it a very very small comfort to even think that the belief is that it could. Oh how I wish it was actually true. What is a comfort though at the moment is slowly but surely working my way through my pre xmas preparation list which along with organising presents and food also involves a deep clean and sort out of the house. Last week I sorted out my workroom over two afternoons. The bookcases are still double stacked but now much more neatly and in much better groupings - most of the photography boooks are all together in one corner, though the death, gothic and victorian studies are still spread over two bookcases. Fiction takes up the rest of the shelfspace. There are still piles of equipment and materials on the floor next to the bookcases but it's all been sorted into much neater piles and I know what is in each one and where to look for things. Plus a bag of stuff went in the bin, a bag of stuff went into the recycling bin and two bags of stuff were dropped off at the charity shop on Tuesday morning. Imposing a bit of order makes me feel a bit better, as does looking at the pictures I took using the really cheap plastic camera (example above) as they have mostly come out exactly the way I wanted them too - I hope that viewers also see elements of creepiness, melancholy and old looking-ness. I'm looking forward to using some of them either as stills in a short film or as image transfers onto material. Whilst doing this I will probably be listening to one of my favourite podcasts which I am finding very comforting (either the Boulet Brothers Creatures of the Night, Peaches Christ Midnight Mass, The Uncanny on Radio 4 or the soundtrack album from Dark Shadows which I got as a birthday present last year. I've now watched 910 episodes and I remain as much in love with Barnabas Collins as played by Jonathon Frid as I was just over 2 years ago when I first started watching it. My curiosity aroused by what I'd heard of a gothic horror soap opera featuring a sympathetic vampire. Hearing the theme tune has a kind of ASMR effect on me and my husband - it's a real kind of 'aah deep breath calming' kind of effect and for the next twenty minutes we can get lost in and be distracted by ghostly, vampiric and time travelling goings on the Collinwood Estate. Thank you for reading and I hope you too have something that you can find solace in and some distraction and calm escape. |
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