this place i found

The Front, Queenstown

My feet dangle from the wall of this place I found. The sun behind me lets them cast their shadow on the gravelly lakeside.  The wind moves around them, catching the inner arches of both, somehow. It must be undecided on its direction.

I hear the pootlings of a nearby guitarist.  As he or she finger-picks quickly, the seagulls and the sea provide percussion.  The sea complements the guitarist more than the seagulls do.  My hair moves across my eyes as if the wind is trying to regain my attention.  

I only have a couple more days to soak up this view. I wonder if I will ever believe its beauty that still feels fictional in its intensity.  If it’s fictional, it’s cleverly done. I can see no tears or joins in the backdrop. No stitches or staples.

On each side of the lake, trees stretch out as far as the flat land will let them to shield this cove.  Where they stop, the rugged but kind mountains take over the protective function.

I am unable to imagine this place in any other season or in any other time.  My disbelief continues.

My cynicism is gratified for a moment as a black speedboat imitating the shape of a killer whale moves across the horizon.

I have two more days to digest this scene.  I hope I do and I hope I don’t.

My tree, Albert Park, Auckland

I find the greatest tree that I have ever seen and sit in it, flip flops discarded at its base.  

This place I found had every feature a good tree should have.

There is a cave at the bottom that has undoubtedly hosted many imaginations.  Its smooth roots provide plenty of seating for me to rest following my explorations of this new city.  Its branches above my head protect me from the hot sun. The sun projects shimmering silhouettes of small leaves on floor as the wind wriggles through.

What kind of tree is this? Why are its roots above ground (other than to provide the cave and seating)?

A man to my right explains to his wife that this tree, my favourite tree, has rotted from the inside. Can this be true?  Are these not roots after all?

I defensively joke to myself “rotten from the inside like everything I’ve ever loved” while I fill up with disbelief. Not my tree.

It fits!

This place I found is great! I’m not usually allowed up here.This fruit bowl is usually filled with apples and oranges. But today it is empty. My people have disappeared and another human comes in to feed me. It means I can explore different areas of the kitchen that I am normally chased off. I like this bowl, it fits me well and makes me feel secure and warm. From this worktop I can see the whole kitchen and keep an eye on things. I can even see into the garden. It’s quite near my feeding bowl, so I can smell my food and biscuits, which is reassuring. The feeding human laughed when she saw me here, I don’t know why. I think it’s a perfect bed!

We are on a narrowboat on a canal in North Wales. I am sitting at the front of the boat which is being expertly and smoothly steered by my son.

There is a gentle breeze, soft and mild at the end of August.

The only sounds I hear are the boat engine, which is not loud - the engine is at the back of the boat, which is a long way away, and the occasional splash of fish jumping for flies.

I see soft coulds in a blue sky. Suddenly there is the electric-blue flash of a kingfisher. He flits from the trees alongside the canal, ahead of us for a while, then he pauses in a tree as if waiting for us to catch up. He does this for a long stretch of the canal, so although our glimpses of him are brief, they are many. We are so lucky to have his company!

The narrowboat moves at such a slow pace - slower than someone walking on the tow path - that I can almost feel my heartbeat slowing. This place I found is peaceful and calming.

My Bench, The River Ness

I sit on a bench between houses and the river. Front doors stand behind me, just ten or fifteen steps from the Ness.

The ripples of water nearest to me move closer as if to greet me, in the shape of knowing smiles. Knowing beauty. The smile-free water in the centre of the river moves much faster and more directly, like it is trying to get somewhere.

I see rocks and pebbles on the riverbed through the clean water. The riverbed is only obscured by the surface’s reflections of the trees on the other side.

A seagull perches on the green tube of fence that stands between me and the river. First balancing easily on one red rubber foot before manoeuvring both feet onto the post. Its beak and feet match.

The unshiny silver bridge suspended to my left brings a stream of infrequent passers-by. My bench in this place I found is awkwardly placed. Some couples walk in front; some walk behind; some split up. I watch their faces change from nosy speculation (what is she writing?) to a reflection of my smile. A strange transaction happens across my bench as a preacher leans over to offer a pamphlet to a man in a flat cap on the other side. The latter says a simple and elongated “no”.

A light breeze takes a leaf to the surface of the close-by water. The leaf tells me that the smiling water is moving in the same direction as the fast water. Just taking a different pace this time.

A Marriage on the Agenda or The London Eye

From the Eye just past 180 degrees, the rain is drizzling its intricate patterns down the glass pod surrounding its occupants.  I'm encased in the transparent container with a precious cargo which includes a hen.  Blobs from heaven's watering can becoming heavier as two of them merge and make more still, gathering speed and breaking into riverlets; now gaining momentum as they trace down the outside of the glass protection - making more blobs which just can't contain their own weight - more riverlets.

Awesome seeing London from the top.  Buildings, people and modes of transport all in miniature and my Beady Eye is drawn to the patient boats tied and waiting mid-river - for what?  For whom?  Idle.  Linked together, bobbing in time with the river movement.  Rhythmic slapping, slopping of water. No agenda.

This moment in time, at the top of the world in this place I found won't last, but the iconic view is imprinted in my memory.  My co-flyers in this glass container linked together in love and friendship, all hand-picked and all  in rhythmic motion -as one like the boats. A wedding is on the agenda God willing!!  An uber privilege to share this special time.

Gazebo surrounded by green - Supernormal Festival, Braziers Park

A short stubby spire surrounded by bricks encloses a small group of interested, scribbling people.  Their pens move like soldiers on a mission to complete the task of poetry.  I smile at the thought of the breeze tickling and encouraging them to write more.  Trees sway relaxingly to the rhythm of wind.

Spikes of green tickle my thighs as I hum in time with the rustle of the leaves.  Shades of green.  Shades of yellow.  Happiness in a single root.  Imagine the love and nurture that goes into growing the leaves of trees; the pigment in the petals; the pollen in the flower.

All these things fascinate me while I sit.  And write.  And sketch out my thoughts of the gazebo surrounded by green.

Words and photograph by Amber

Landmark Bar. Bergen Kunsthall. 

Bergen’s skies relentlessly try to empty, to no avail. My jeans are rain-sodden behind my knees as the chair that I sit on presses them against my legs. 

I stare up at the mountain outside the window: obscured by round-edges of clouds and trees. There is no sign of the sun but a dull neon rainbow stands vertically beside the window. 

 A toddler roars a beautiful clumsy song in a way that only toddlers know how. Her big sister sits quietly whispering dialogue from one plastic toy to the other. 

This place I found is sterile yet warm. Spot-lit pot plants line the mezzanine-shelves below the ceiling. The [faux] leather chair beside me shows more grooves than my own. More worn. More loved? 

I peer through the door to my right. It frames the doorway in the distance which, in turn, frames the doorway behind it. The carpet is brown without being drab. The clean lines of the room reflect the straight grooves in the wall. 

I hear cutlery tap crockery as the family to my left tuck into their meal. I have a specific projection that they are a reunited family who have travelled from the corners of Norway to be reunited here. Nobody can disprove my fiction. 

This place I found: Thoughts on Skomer Island

  It’s very windy but not a cold wind; it is bright and clear with the sun breaking through from time to time.

It’s noisy: the background sound of the sea breaking on the rocks and cliffs; the laughter of the gulls, the cheep of the oyster-catchers, the indistinguishable sounds in the melody of mixed birdsong, the clamour and chatter of the guillemots and razorbills nesting on the cliff face – all speaking to each other and shouting like a room full of excited people.

It’s beautiful: clear and clean, just nature, nothing else. Sea, rocks, cliffs, scrubland, ferns, rock plants – and burrows, hundreds and hundreds of burrows. Some for rabbits, but the vast majority are home to birds – Manx shearwater and puffins.

It’s peaceful. The concerns of day to day life are put in perspective by the ever-changing yet changeless beauty of nature.

I feel refreshed.

Words and photograph by Wolfiefan.

Half-submerged in the undergrowth, I catch glimpses of the pond through long stems. There is a mother coot with her chick dallying on the surface. Occasionally she plunges beneath to look for food causing a little splash every time.

An electric strimmer that lately motored through the wilderness is now resting and still. I can hear snatches of bird song sung in repeated phrases from a tree nearby. A song thrush I guess, and looking up: so it is! I am so pleased to have guessed right that I smile.

It is warm, warm, warm, but with a perfect breeze that rustles the leaves around me gently. It caresses the hairs on my arm but otherwise makes no intrusion. No chill, just a welcome coolness in this heady midday sun.

Although the birds are what draw my attention most, I notice there is other life here, too. A blue-bottomed dragonfly and a rusty-bottomed bee. There is life in this place I found, and the air is busy with it.

The Thames

Basking warmth. The river a murky brown. It smells of the sea today. A smell that brings with it the idea - the possibility - of an escape.

The day is a slow-moving day. It is a lazy Friday.

Over the footbridge, which is suspended high, high, up above me, people make their ant-like way from the north side of the river to the south and back again.

In the background, beyond the chatter of the office crowd out for its lunch-time dose of vitamin D, and beyond the pounding and panting of joggers busy with the need to make every minute count, there is a background hum. It is the perpetual buzz of a city at work. The engines of trains, planes, buses and boats overlay each other, a mesh of industrial sounds that I have learnt to tune out. It is barely perceptible to me until I stop, in a moment like this, and really listen.

Out of nowhere, a seagull calls out, and pulls me back to my thoughts of the sea. I follow that thread up, out and away from this place I found.

Aller and Beer Woods, Somerset

High above the latticed woods, a tree in blossom shivers against a bright blue sky, alive with eddies and currents. The cool breeze carries memories of new-grown grass, and the acid note of fecundity.

The woods below are deep and shaded, steeply sloping and sprinkled with bluebells, wood anemone, celandine, and ankle-high dog’s mercury. 

A crow caws lazily. Birds chatter and echo snatches of song. A sheep bleats from the fields below.

There are cowslips in this place I found, and lush green grass, long and thick and rough to the touch.

I lie back and breathe in the scents, watching a white butterfly lollop above. I am jolted back to an early time of childhood, spent very near this place, and I realise that this landscape slots into my consciousness as the ideal expression of ‘world’. My first impressions of nature were formed in fields and woods like these and I suppose my child’s brain seized them and squirrelled them away as a foundational idea.

A stick lies deep in the grass. The sun slants through grass blades and young leaves. The first day of summer’s wind nestles and rustles and softly roars, like the sea.

Eastville Park

On a warm, very sunny day in March I sit on the ground at the side of a grass field, behind a slight ramp of grass; tucked in to the landscape. I can't see the view down to the lake but I can see a lot of the sky, which is a summer blue I’m sure. The warm haze is blending the tree line with the sky.

A robin touches down from a low branch and quickly back up, as if to pick something up or check something out that it has been scrutinising. A breeze is moving its branch perch and pushing up a few feathers behind its breast. It’s looking at me straight on, I stare at it for as long as I can before it goes. From in front of me to behind me I track the breeze by sound; dry, old keys still attached to the ash trees rattle.

As I write, my hand gets in my vision which is a strange shift of focus. I can see how some of the lines are filled with white dryness.

A crow flies low with one feather in its wing out of place, then two crows fly after each other over my head; the sound of their wings sounds like dogs panting.

The sun is warming my shins in black leggings; I could fall asleep. I like the pace of this place I found. What is calming is the escape, the abandon; no walls or sense of time.

Pavilion Cafe, London: A symphony of the water birds

I hear a high pitched ringing of song in the distance.  My attention is grasped by a closer chirp and I try to identify its owner.  I realise that the repeating short sharp sound is an exchange: from one voice-box to another.

As the pace of the exchange increases, a distressed duck produces a baritone belt through his throat, decorated with slow vibrato. Then another.  Then his companions join in.  As the exchanges flow, the volume and tension build ready for the noisy geese to roar:  a crescendo to bring the creation to its powerful climax. Then stop. A few more exchanged chirps. A single chirp.  Then left with the high pitched ringing.  

The creatures do not move towards or away from each other at any point.  They hold their positions as an ununited troop.  The swans do not contribute: haughtily moving across the close horizon.  Maybe they'd like to join in? Maybe they'd like it if they tried it?  Maybe they're worried that their peers would disapprove?  

I feel warm yet I see my breath.  Happily, this place I found distracted me in the middle of a half-hearted run.  The Pavilion's pier gives me a perfect viewing point for the Symphony.  The humans and their voices are inside the cafe leaving me and a patient dog empowered by the performance.  Magic.

Somewhere on Mare Street

I watch as a professional dog walker is dragged along the pavement beside me by the two dogs in his right hand as he, in turn, drags the slower pair in his left.  He takes my eye line to the word “BELLY” which is scrawled across the building beside the canal:  tall school-desk-graffiti.

Freelancers sit in an orderly fashion along the inner edge of this establishment:  each with its back to the glass as if to provide insulation.  They have identical MacBooks which have seemingly been issued with the free tap water.  I sit facing them with my notebook and mechanical pencil.  

I adore the music:  Michael Jackson’s hits playing out a little louder than might be expected in a place like this place I found.  It is not too loud so as to drown out the sounds of the communications between staff and patrons.  In the space between songs a gentle tapping on keyboards can be heard.  There are no conversations here.  

The cobbled road beside me has been partially covered by a rectangular slice of cement that looks like it has been torn from a magazine as two familiar yellow lines provide a edging.  The inner decor reflects the outside:  cement intermittently interrupted by gestures of trees.  I wonder if they’re real.  The flashing, frosted Christmas tree is not real.  

As the tables around me begin to be cleared, I reach for the final mouthful of coffee that sits as a perfect circle in the bottom of my cup.

Pike Place Market Urban Garden (#pigshavedreamstoo)

I realise, wandering into this place I found, that my poor sense of direction has finally paid off. I stand on a patio at the end of a market corridor: suspended high above sea level. Metal boxes and buckets still bearing their bar-codes hold miniature jungles. They are interspersed with pig-themed chairs. An old rocking chair warns potential sitters that “pigs have dreams too”. Yes they do.

The concrete in the foreground cuts through the deep blue sea which spreads across the horizon bringing consistency to this scene. As the sun glows high it keeps my shadow short.

A ferry slowly guides my eye line from left to right. It begins with the football stadium: the arches are a puzzle of triangles which blend with the cranes to its right. The cranes busily build a new sea wall in front of the old one with the posture of diligent dinosaurs. The ferry moves ahead of a tree-covered island in the distance, followed by sky-filled space, followed by tree-covered island. The latter island stands in the distant foreground to obscure the base of mountainous shadows. In the main, today the clouds touch the mountains without attempting to hide their wonder.

The wonders of wandering.

Providence Park

I’m overcome with a giddy excitement as I take my seat an hour ahead of time and turn into a sponge. Immediately I notice the reason for my tickets being so reasonably priced. The entire goal is precisely obscured by a pillar. Nevertheless, my excitement does not dwindle: particularly as I spy the famous log to my left. It is draped in memorabilia like a joint of meat at Christmas time. It is my understanding that, should the Timbers score, a scrumptious slice of timber will be delivered to the goalscorer.

Despite being on the other side of the world everything in this place I found is familiar. I feel at home. The differences stand out to me as a Hollywood portrayal of one’s own life must. Mobile vendors sell their cotton candy in the stand; the announcer on the pitch refers to the “showdown” we are about to encounter; I am allowed to drink my cool beer with my eyes on the pitch. Everyone is well behaved here.

I look to the back of the programme to find a list of players only to find it is on page 5. I study the list for familiar names. The timers on the score boards to my right and left are being utilised ahead of time but it is not clear what they are counting down to. Not the start of the match.

In age old fashion the fans behind the goal take care of the singing while the pitch-side fans politely clap along. It’s not so different.