Quince and I

Our cool smooth skins touch

Our bark warming and softening in the sun

Our bodies breathe the stillness of the air

Our bodies call for nourishment

Feed me, feed me, feed me

We absorb the sun

Growing inside

Ideas will blossom

We will fruit

Creatively

Building our strength through stillness and contemplation

Storing our energy establishing ourselves in our sunny spot

before we flower and share in our abundance.

These words and photographs document a creative response to an invitational score given to me by Choreographer Itta Howie http://www.ittahowie.madasafish.com

Score:

Close your eyes

touch a plant stone tree soil

listen to what it says

about itself

about you

and what the two of you

have in common

Eastville Park Sloe Gin

Wild Cherry Plum

Colston Road Cave Text

Big bluebottles skim my head,
speeding like noisy motorbikes
through hot residential streets

100 children scream, shout, laugh, chatter, fight, play, run, clap
500 yards away

red knees, blue shiny shorts and rubber pads jog along the shadow

a cabbage white changes direction
1, 2, 3 times

sticky leaves shimmer and wiggle

a pink scooter, no brakes and bunches

yellow mustard, bright, vivid, hot

Elderflowers nod and wink - a glimmer of gold

breeze blocks and barbed wire

a rucksack full of garden tools

silhouettes of trees move like water on the battleship grey tarmac
dry flattened grass lies motionless at the edge of the path - its shape mirroring the tidal pattern of eroded soil

Leaves and Wind continue to perform their well rehearsed collaboration, a lifetime long creative partnership -
an infinite improvisation - the soundscape composed for here
I realise my breath now matches the calm rhythm of this composition.

Purifying Cleavers Tonic

To sit and do nothing is to know where you are

An abundance of plants to identify, some remain without a name that I can give them.
Many man made objects, no longer in their intended use - lie around creating a collage of archeology.
The repetitive cheep of a small common bird imitating the exotic call of the cicada.
A crow yelps and pigeons flap their wings like a clap that punctuates the air.
A spring blackbird harmoniously sings, a wood pigeon cuts through with its distinctive mantra.

My thoughts drift to my domestic practicalities, completely transported to future conversations and mental to do lists.

Brought back here by the rattle shake of the magpie and I refocus on what's before me,
the bleached wood of old buddleia roots and stems stretch out across the hardcore - dug out, hacked down, and abandoned into this wasteland.
More than enough wood to fuel a week of rocket stove cooking.

Adelade Place

Absorbing the warm sun as I sit in this walled garden,

Peaceful and content to be still with millions of organisms' activity around me,

In a secluded corner of this plot I am free to be alone with what is here,

No one notices me, no one is overseeing, no one is watching my inactivity,

No one judges my desire to rest here in this deserted space,

I am free to be amongst the rubbish and the weeds, undisturbed,

I watch unused waste uselessly waiting to be used,

I breath with the weeds which continue to live and grow,

I sit in the presence of this moment.