clouds over Vernon Street

Hoy cloud reflection

cloud formation

Cloud formation over Batley

clouds over Pudsey

Hoy

Hoy from the ferry

Mourning Handkerchief 10: Negative Space Pyramid. Presence of an Absence.

There has been a growing presence of an absence. Like someone just around the next corner whom I never quite catch up to. Like a mistiness about the places in the house where he always sat. I can't look at them straight but from the corner of my eye I feel the presence of an absence. Waking from a dream of a conversation so real but realising that it can't continue because he has gone. Not just away in Scarborough or down at the club - he is really gone, as in not coming back - ever.

Mourning Handkerchief 11: Negative Space Rectangle; An Empty Chair on Fathers's Day.

There was a -trip- in the day today as it dawned on me that without the presences of my Father - that Father's Day had become obsolete, an insult, a horror, an uncomfortable silence when asked how I would spend that special day for Dads. Marked this year, for me by an absence; and every year to follow. Infinite absence. Completely gone - not coming back- ever. Father's Day is terminated - permanently.

Mourning Handkerchief 9: Negative Space Circle; A Gap in the Conversation.

There was a gap in the conversation this morning at the breakfast table and crossword book remained on the shelf - unopened for the third month in a row.

peat fire smoke patterns at Kirbuster farm

The smoke from the turf fire at Kirbuster farm museum in Orkney. It was really hypnotising watching the swirls and shifts in the banks of smoke as the wind from the hole in the roof above the fire caught and drifted the sparks and then the plumes of wonderfully rich smoke.

Infinity.

Waiting. 

Between two states but not touching either.

After starting but before finishing.

Liminal space.

Cloud Formations over Orkney

Over a week of wandering across Orkney from Stromness to Kirkwall, from the Brough of Birsay to the Hoy Sound I was thinking about infinity and looking at the sky. 

It all started on the journey outwards. Looking out over the side of the good ship Hamnavoe from Scrabster out to sea we suddenly came through an unexpected bank of thick impenetrable fog. 

It was as if we were passing from one world into another, as if I could see to infinity and yet hardly see my hand in front of my face. It was completely still and silent in the fog. 

In the fog I was between two islands, between heaven and earth, between the sea and the sky, between the sea and the depths beneath, between life and death .Infinity was present.