comprehensive and interesting interiors

To Youth - Til Ungdommen - Nordahl Greig

2011-08-07T12:33:00.000-07:00

There are three translations in parallel with the original text here
and stuff about the author here
Norway's no.1 single these days is in the background of this video
or, if that's too folky for you, there's always the pop-eyed Danish pop of Kim Larsen.

Til Ungdommen
av Nordahl Grieg

Kringsatt av fiender,
gå inn i din tid!
Under en blodig storm -
vi deg til strid!

Kanskje du spør i angst,
udekket, åpen:
hva skal jeg kjempe med
hva er mitt våpen?

Her er ditt vern mot vold,
her er ditt sverd:
troen på livet vårt,
menneskets verd.

For all vår fremtids skyld,
søk det og dyrk det,
dø om du må - men:
øk det og styrk det!

Stilt går granatenes
glidende bånd
Stans deres drift mot død
stans dem med ånd!

Krig er forakt for liv.
Fred er å skape.
Kast dine krefter inn:
døden skal tape!

Elsk og berik med drøm
alt stort som var!
Gå mot det ukjente
fravrist det svar.

Ubygde kraftverker,
ukjente stjerner.
Skap dem, med skånet livs
dristige hjerner!

Edelt er mennesket,
jorden er rik!
Finnes her nød og sult
skyldes det svik.

Knus det! I livets navn
skal urett falle.
Solskinn og brød og ånd
eies av alle.

Da synker våpnene
maktesløs ned!
Skaper vi menneskeverd
skaper vi fred.

Den som med høyre arm
bærer en byrde,
dyr og umistelig,
kan ikke myrde.

Dette er løftet vårt
fra bror til bror:
vi vil bli gode mot
menskenes jord.

Vi vil ta vare på
skjønnheten, varmen
som om vi bar et barn
varsomt på armen!

2010-01-16T14:06:00.000-08:00

Although the swaying church bell
rings, tolls, tells, clangs
the dust and stony architecture
of these worn out fields, only
because it has no other purpose

and even though the wet nurse
of religion offers no more
than a dry dug of history
to all these hatchling cuckoos' gaping maws,

I would ring the bell, at least
until I thought of something
better to do. And then,
then I would ring the bell.

A Curtain Call

2009-11-23T08:28:00.000-08:00

Snowflakes perform now in the way they do -
the falling, floating symbiotic states
of elements in Winter - air and flakes
coherent but distinct; a pas de deux
without the music. Headlights move on through
a curtain weave of chaos. I see shapes,
or dots I dream of joining as they fade
from unique tableau to unique tableau.

I watch these movements of incognate form:
see how my own perceptions have designed
purpose for dancers on the air’s trapeze.
That is when the falling angels come
to meet the rising ape I am, here in
the quiet sphere imagination needs.

Sliding Mirror Doors!

2009-08-04T14:00:00.001-07:00

Oh lookee - making everything look bigger than it really is...

The Stairs

2009-01-11T08:56:00.001-08:00

the beam

2008-12-20T10:34:00.000-08:00

Concrete Formal Poetry

2008-11-16T09:27:00.000-08:00

A Sonnet about Concrete

Heaven is an orchard honey kiss
in pastoral cool air greening glades.
Hell is made of concrete and smells of piss
where people do people and nature fades.

A cold soup pours into the form work form
the steel float smooths it and the steel bars hold
the standard work form works to the norm
where industrial economy’s bought and sold

sweet minions walk in close to the walls to hide
true colours from the consuming sleezy
abuser of heaven they have inside.
Love is all you need, but it don’t come easy.

When there’s fire between your faces, nirvana doesn’t care,
it’s a neutral grey compromise pretending it’s not there.

Friendship

2008-09-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

Now as the party winds down - as it does -
half-empty jugs of ale, half full of ale,
put down from toasting half-forgotten causes,
lie half-remembered, roundabout the hall.

We may take up by way of recollection,
the glasses that we held, and tend the fire
that heats the hearth’s eternal conversation;
half-joining up our half-discrete desires.

But nothing lasts for ever. We must go
and going means a multitude of ways
and changes - sometimes seeking different goals.
Remember this, for all our future days:

If there is judgement and if I’m the one
to judge, I won’t mind which side you were on.

It's been a good year for the butterflies...

2008-09-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

Swallowtail
One pill makes you larger . . .

Something white...

Brimstone

Blue on a wild strawberry flower

Peacock

Something White

Moorland Yellow

2Cats

2008-09-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

George and Fergus

and from upstairs...

2008-06-22T11:38:00.001-07:00

Work in Constant Progress

2008-06-22T10:30:00.001-07:00

Two Paintings

2008-06-21T04:29:00.001-07:00

Ancient Hellenic brass pig(let)

2008-01-31T10:08:00.001-08:00

I think maybe the link to this picture doesn't work because I haven't paid the rent on the site.
Er - - well, you can click on the empty image frame and get the whole thing...

2008-01-11T15:40:00.000-08:00

Just fitted a new lens, actually. A minute later the cat hadn't moved but the sun had and there was no reflection.

Blooming Rodos and Thinking Azaleas

2007-05-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

2007-05-09T11:58:00.000-07:00

I got a macro lens...

2007-02-27T14:11:00.000-08:00

Dear Academy, My Brand New Colour
was Refused for Autumn Exhibition

Photons stamp their feet on sidewalks
of all our seasons.
Outside revolving doors
of perception they form lines,
weaving in
and out
of chaos,
then they hear:
"Wave or particle?"
and respond,
or are responded to
as they drift on through.

Tell me what it is
before it drifts
into the spectrum of our sight

and show me the grand, unifying
colour of your money.

Franky and Laura Were Lovers

I always say: “You can’t draw me, unless
the pen responds directly to your eyes.”
I always say: “You must allow surprise
to be a partner in sublime success.”
Each future, unknown moment’s lucky guess,
being unquestioned, cannot deal in lies:
in blissful ignorance God showers dice,
but in omniscience he gambles less.

So we, the slaughtered and forgiven lambs,
both knowing and unknowing, grace the scene
with all too finite mortal hours of sport.
Our quest for vision of the world is damned
within and out of reach because, between
the sight and seeing hangs the veil of thought.

Chiesa Santo Spirito

2006-11-09T06:21:00.000-08:00

Art

2006-07-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

Black and white in colour

2006-07-21T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm too chicken to enter this in the dpc challenge.

2006-05-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

Cornelius has bought a pub. I doubt it. There is some discussion about a name, as usual, so here is my unwelcome and unsolicited contribution:

After seeing a pub in Lewes, Sussex, called 'The Volunteer', I was put in mind of the saying that a volunteer is worth ten pressed men. I suggest the new pub be called 'The Eleven Pressed Men'.

New Camera

2006-05-07T12:57:00.000-07:00

Old roses

Stain and varnish

2006-03-01T10:04:00.000-08:00

with a narrow victory in debate over slash and burn

Crows come down to the river

2006-02-08T08:40:00.000-08:00

because all their food's covered in snow?

a mouse-eye view

2006-02-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

If you recognise any of these ducks

2006-01-31T16:10:00.000-08:00

I suspect they might appreciate a good home.

Progress

2006-01-29T15:41:00.000-08:00

The point of view from which this picture is taken is very similar to an earlier one:

Between the desert and the sown.

2006-01-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

France Burning

2005-12-03T02:21:00.000-08:00

Clichés des Banlieues – Fourteen Prosaic Alexandrines

I couldn’t teach my grandmother, not even if
life's ordinary oppression hadn’t blown her
away before I had the chance to blow an egg.
A blown egg is an empty ovoid, blown blown, void
void. The egg that came last because nothing followed.
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good
and the big old bastard Nobody is out there
blowing bad. I'll just blow out these words so they can
tell you about my grandmother’s ordinary
oppression then. Nobody will just walk across
these bridges when he gets to them, and all those eggs
that have lain together in the basket so long
will blow right through the cataclysm of denial.
Here are the twelve syllables running from the smell.

PSR

There are cobwebs in Old South Wales

2005-11-24T14:06:00.000-08:00

Climbing into the

2005-11-23T12:50:00.000-08:00

The boiling sea

2005-11-22T14:32:00.000-08:00

It may look like Mordor, but it's just the Brecon beacons - and quite a sight.

Feng shui it ain't

2005-11-08T14:02:00.000-08:00

but while we've got all this other stuff going on...

Angels in the living space

2005-10-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

Richard Zola r.i.p.

2005-10-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

Richard Zola: Requiem

in peace, albeit prematurely. Rest
as long as resting takes you to your peace,
or sift beneath the awnings and the eaves
of dusk, where microscopic movements step
to night and where the piper at the gates
of evening paints the footsteps for each leaver
of the dance. Show him the details, please,
and wish each dancer through the door, the best.

Goodbye and thanks for all the unworn shoes
and everything you courteously gave
to us. The whole thing's yours now, so you're free
to step down anywhere and as you do,
to get a sense of all that great perspective
which we need, but are too small to see.

Don't take your eye off the ball...

2005-10-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

Inside again

2005-10-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

A contemporary interior - complete with a lovingly restored Charles de Gaulle table.

Rouen

2005-10-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

The major city of Northern France in the middle ages, a lot of Rouen has been preserved. The spire in the background replaced the one destroyed in WWII.

There may be no better way to see it than on a sketching holiday. At least, that's what I thought after seeing these three Japanese efforts.

The cultural excuse

2005-10-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

In this gripping scene from the Bayeux Tapestry, possibly composed by a forebear of Steven Spielberg, William of Normandy removes his helmet in the heat of battle in order to demonstrate to his troops that rumours of his death were, indeed, exaggerated.

More prosaic and contemporary...

2005-10-19T15:30:00.000-07:00

How's this for a little washroom interior. (Using up spare tiles).

The tower's no slouch

2005-10-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

Here's the spire, taken from one of the arrow slots of the nearby fort. (All made for William the Conqueror , or at least his wife, Mathilda). The entrance is there at the bottom of the pic.

And here's a scruffy little detail from the towers at the other end of the church:

The front

2005-10-14T08:04:00.000-07:00

The same wall seen from the outside. Touch of the flamboyant gothic in the arch there, what?

Cathédrale St. Pierre, Caen

2005-10-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

We've been running critically short on architectural interiors here.
This is, as the title here suggests, the Cathédrale St-Pierre at Caen. Mind you, the gothic monuments are so thick on the ground in Normandy that they call it a church rather than a cathedral. They don't consider it worthy of more than passing mention

in the official city website , either.

Tomorrow, the view from the front.

Old man river 12.10.2005

2005-10-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

noen sjøskole (og kake) bilder

2005-10-10T14:05:00.000-07:00

Klikk på bilde(ne) så får du større. Eller klikk her og få en collage.

Klikk her for noen knuter (knots).

volailles voulant voler

2005-10-09T09:18:00.000-07:00

runs on through the autumnal city

2005-10-08T16:20:00.000-07:00

The tantalising elfen sonnet form
must be the work of higher minds,
for though the quatrains’ four-square lines
are quite familiar, the sound

is foreign; eerie as a freighter’s horn
to mist-bound senses, it reminds
us of the Sirens we so yearn to find
we’ll take on oceans for their song

then break across their shores and dissipate.
The absent fourth quatrain denies
us knowledge of that altered state:
we could not stand to be so wise.

..when the angel woos the clay he'll lose his wings at the dawn of the day.

2005-10-06T04:02:00.000-07:00

That title's from Raglan Road, by P Kavanagh.

Rural Trainspotting

2005-10-05T14:03:00.000-07:00

Markers

2005-10-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

An innovative move by environmentally friendly surveyors has seen the use of seagulls to indicate strategic points on proposed building plots such as the one pictured above.

Reaction from the building trade in general has been lukewarm.

Flight of the . . .

2005-10-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

Avast shipmates!

2005-09-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

Cargoes

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

    -- John Masefield

Not the same for everyone

2005-09-28T14:51:00.000-07:00

Didn't they do well?

Everyday prosody

2005-09-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

Church of Poetry Blaze

Local fire chief describes incident as ‘minor conflagration of vanities’.

It’s only tinsel burning:
get out of the cold heat glitter and return
to the manifest and dangerous
traverse of stairs; to the reins of gridlock angels
on streets of highway code -
a moving mode of unaware
of all the good hands
putting all the good things there.

A brake line’s not a metaphor.
Flooring keeps you safe above the ground.
The house does not fall down.

Picture at an Exhibition

2005-09-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

The Poet The Painter. The Factotum Works I. 2005, by Dag Thoresen. Photography by Thomas Widerberg.

They don't make them like this any more.

...and I said let grief be a falling leaf...

2005-09-24T16:31:00.000-07:00

Science fair - we hope it is...

2005-09-24T02:03:00.000-07:00

Here is our microcosmos presented at a science fair for schools.

Every beautiful assistent has a magician.

It's that river again - running

2005-09-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is either. There's me just cycling over the bridge on my way back from the sea school and all up and down the little river are floating lights and strolling people. Very nice too, I thought.

The Autumnal Equinox

2005-09-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

Bit of a prosaic fountain, it's true, but it illustrates a point in that the first picture was taken on September the fourth, while the second was taken on the nineteenth. The water's been turned off because temperatures are now falling below freezing point at night.

Nine years ago, (!) while the internet was . . . - well, it was nine years younger, anyway - poets from around the world submitted things they had written on the day of the Autumnal equinox. I think that may have been on the twenty-third of September, but I always associate twenty first with solstices and equinoxes, so I'm sticking with today.

Here's one from Norway.

A River Runs Through It

2005-09-20T06:56:00.000-07:00

'It' being Oslo. You can just about see the Autumn happening. This taken on the way to work.

The other taken on the way home.

Day two at the seaschool

2005-09-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

Taxi til Oslo Sjøskole - there are equinoctial gales in the air and we were not a little concerned about our baptism of fire in sailing dinghies. No worries in the lea of the island though.

Sculpture accredited and shown in context

2005-09-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

Here she is in context, today, Sunday 18th September. 'She' is correct, by the way, as the sculpture is entitled 'Vindfruen' which would be something like Lady of the Wind. The artist is Ole Sørlie, of whom I found little enough on the net, but he's no spring chicken and can be seen here at the unveiling of one of his pictures in the music room of the high school at which he taught until 1990.
Whether these pictures and those in the link above give the impression of an open-minded, clean-aired Scandinavian model society, or rather of the town that inspired Edvard Munch's visual scream, is entirely up to you to decide.

The statue

2005-09-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

It's just a twenty minute stroll over the botanical gardens for me to reach the Olympic-sized swimming pool known as Tøyenbadet.
I use it pretty much every day and on the way I pass this sculpture. I should reference the artist. I'll come back with the details tomorrow.

I'm on my way back from the swim when I took this, so the sun's on its way down. If anything the colours are truer, though - she's very rock coloured.

Here she is 'taken from behind', as it were. The Munch Museum is directly behind (and down the hill), but he didn't make this.
There's a bit about an up and coming Munch exhibition in London in today's Guardian.

2005-09-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

You may believe it or you may not, but the local building authorities (Plan- og bygningsetaten) have now bestowed their blessing upon us so that we may convert this loft. Here goes...

Sea school

2005-09-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

In the shadow of the mighty corn silo of Oslo, I waited for the boat to the school of theoretical seamanship (Oslo Sjøskole).

Overlooking the fjord.

And here's Oslo by night, looking back.

Red Admiral

2005-09-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

Another ubiquitous and dangerously colourful fellow is the Red Admiral. I believe they're very migrant and some of the ones we see in England can come from as far away as Africa. This one's pictured in Oslo's botanical gardens on September the fourth though, and looks far too unspoiled to have flown overseas. Maybe it's the offspring of some that flew north in the spring. Pretty thing, anyway.

As you may see from this picture of a Red Admiral underwing, they do try to be a little less obvious when the wings are folded. If this one, photographed in Essex many moons ago, were a cameleon, then it would be in the confusing situation of not quite knowing whether to look like a brick wall or a shocking pink buddleia. I think it's doing rather well under such trying circumstances.

Peacock

2005-09-13T10:29:00.001-07:00

3rd of September - this thing must just have broken out of its chrysalis, so it's drying out its newly created wings in the sun. It very obligingly lays them flat to achieve this, and after very, very gingerly creeping up on it with my Nikon coolpix 4100 I got this improbably high quality picture. There may not be an awful lot of survival value in looking like that and hatching out in Norway this close to winter, but the underside of the wings is a lot less flamboyant and they hide and hibernate so as to get the wheel of life rolling again in spring.

Here's a picture of the peacock underwing, taken with a flash (!) about 25 years ago in Sussex. At the time I thought my equipment was rather sophisticated. Anyway, you can see how they fade into woody backgrounds when they need to.

Late summer in Oslo

2005-09-10T13:45:00.000-07:00

Sensommer i Oslo, altså.

You could almost wonder why butterflies should exist at these latitudes, but then again, we do.

This lady is hiding after I pictured her in flagrante delicto.

So I suppose she would be embarrassed. I was.

Now that I have managed to get these two pictures to stick to the ether, I shall display a couple of more colourful creatures - also photographed this month - very soon.

really interesting

2005-09-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd never see the time when you could take a horse...