Weird air at the moment, felt it like this all summer – a world away to last years Sahara-heated world cup, carefree child-dancing 3 month savanna slay. A negativity in the air, tinged with this mass tie of humanity that we all care but that we all cant – it’s beyond our control. Less mindspace than ever. How do we fit it all in? What do we choose. Pull back, content bubble, nature escape in – culture crave yet mocking the try-hards, critiques and ‘appropriation’, but how does that help us to progress? No time? Hows that! Blotting out calendars when to sleep run cook see mum and weed the garden, list of friends we need to ‘fit in’ like system checkbox we never even used to have the tools. Will humans grow two heads? Or will our brains shrink as we desire to learn less, draw back, internal, selfish, less smiles more scowls (good, we’re all in on this!), frustrated with unhumanness. Where is the Time to just love the way the rays fall, bump into a friend and eat shit tuna cucumber clingfilmed sandwiches on a bench while the tree trunks grow wiser, rooted standing tall. Hold on to your hearts, please, it’s going to be a bumpy life.
Urbanism
Clerken(d)well
#OldStreet to Clerkenwell wander. It feels strange at the moment, and sometimes you just need to walk with it. The angles, the London layers, the bends and interesting slices (just like a dinner of cucumber, onions and hot sauce) can jolt and rewire your mind 📷➡️
Shoreditch
Brainteased by a seaworld of luscious #london layers – spellbound lunch strolling in the #shoreditch playground while #stormgareth and outofnowhere hot rays slay us; filled spicy with nduja, chimichuri green sauce and hot jerk gravy and @theoleehouston scouts out his post #kerbgherkin tickled market empire. So grateful to have our kaleidoscope of human senses and these awakening spaces locked up in a 20minute radius ➡️📷 Mind freeee
catania
The lady who stands outside #OldStreet tube barriers every weekday morning, handing out papers to the commuters streaming by.
Today I asked her name.
How many people she must see!
The knowledge that she holds;
Those twinkling blue eyes –
The power to change someones whole day with the break of a smile, a glimmer of understanding
or a dagger cold stare if she chose.
I wonder if she wears her hood up as a gesture not to appear too bold;
As people rush to surface from gateway
If the wind catches her lashes, thats an instant lost connection –
or if she genuinely doesnt know.
Does she feel tired after the morning rush?
Does she enjoy her job? Does it nourish her?
Does each day differ? Does she remember those faces? How many people strike conversation? Does it give her comfort in the human spirit or does it make her scared that we’ve forgotton how to grow?
All i know is that, tania (Catania, from Bulgaria),
if you would have looked at me this morning with blank eyes, snapped no to me asking to take a photo and write a poem, it would have set me up a little low.
How fragile we all are to rely on eachothers moments;
Imagine if we all poured out loving connections how sparkling with brilliance every day would be just by being nice to eachother,
Surely its the easiest of all things.
Tooting morning
Peach melba, lychee lemon
#Tooting cracked it’s morning beauty
Spilling soft yolky halo up into the sky.
~
Chuckled light begins dancing
Lighting fresh woken faces
Wondering by.
~
Car lights – day stars twinkling
Teasing beams of afternoon new things
When this colours spread its wings and died.
~
Dusty-pink fat caterpilla duffles
commuters laptop-luggaged and ice wind ruffled,
ready to dip down and huddle
~
before rising up to new palette
Of natures rhymes ever-changing
and ice cream chai.
✒
Be Soft
Be soft; dont let the world make you hard. Dont let other people’s bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that you still believe it to be a beautiful place.
I could not have felt this more this weekend, surrounded by a casscade of beautiful people and minds and lots to do with overcoming trauma. @beautifultrauma_x event / panel @upstairsritzy hearing people speak out about how important it is not to bottle up your feelings. Cried at the beauty of their words, #dontsufferinsilence, though mostly attitudes to when bad things happen in your life just accepting that its all for the best and having trust in this world and your purpose in it. Two: Swashbuckle magic of the @jhalmuriexpress 8 hour till crack of dawn night ride – then cracking my own #puchkapuri station on a hill mound in tooting common with feb sun fire ball buring, (@poojasweets ship backs and Mexico City gift from Angus – jaggery and tamarind from costa Rica). Before stumbling upon a lady @jchicgifts in #tootingmarket making beautiful cut out designs of women. When she told me her story it nearly broke my heart and gave me shivers – six years ago from an operation she became paralysed and blind and now shes this beaming radiant lady making colours and shapes and smiling at how much the experience gave her and how calm she kept and how important it was to keep her brain happy and be strong for the people around her. Seperate pours to come on each and profiles – “give yourself #powerhour” @daniellel2d, and right now ive got my incense sticks and hot masala chai and print up on the wall with a full full heart feeling it all 💫 If you dont stop and mesmer at these little wonders in life, the heros, coincidences and the patterns the universe is rippling you to delight and play in then whats the point. #kurtvonnegut
Kandy to Ella
Kandy to Elllllllllle-a 🚞👋
~
Srilankans gazing with wise amber eyes, tourists with selfie sticks and lenses.
Rolling hills and sun sieved clouds – 7hrs later to bruised foggy skies.
Smells of hot snacks, damp rocks, dusty air and metal tracks,
Horn blow, chug of train, screech, break the rhythm;
People talking, men selling spicy peanuts,
Bright-white clothed school children waving, running by.
Colorful tea pickers, a boy on way to school gleaming with his umbrella looks up at us and smiles (so we smile),
Women with saris and men with baskets – when the train stops, climbing up great hubbles of grandmas and babies board with such non-fuss, ride-life, be happy go-hard.
Deep wrinkled mahogony hand by the door way, toes and trainers, crinkled eyes,
People striking conversation, time going by 📷➡️
Wet-toed wander
Wet-toed wander 👣 With a hot picnic bag locked up dreamy of Mauritian #dhalpuri roti, homemade lamb bone #haleem soup and fermented veg pickle from @Mange_des_Iles.
#Tootingbec common: so many memories. Not been here since the heatwave bare foot dungaree clad post lido amongst scattered limb-baring bathers, and two months on it’s still balmy.
Blue skies break on a 50 min stoll back from Nuffield Colliers just in time for a quick lunch sit before seeing soulbud @chicktania (more green nourishment 💚) – #Tootingmarket goods mixing happy with August-warm gone feelings.
Back then; an orange crisp savanna hay(ze) now it’s this this thick, luscious green dewy paddock glowing low in December rays ☀️➡️📷 Follow the glitter – keep magic; dont kill it. Are things only beautiful because they end?
Alone again
Headed for spicy beef noodles and steamy #bánhcuốn in razor grey rain at Pho Hanoi #Deptford – unsettled from a night screening of @blackkklansman (messes with you) then in fo’ Pho, back out, blue skies and this beauty. Lemongrass-lulled, “take courage” say the deptford skies… and onto @goldsmithsuol – (more metallic roof noodles!) – to be weirded by #mikarottsenberg’s suited men rolling in salad, toenail-painted workers sneezing out rabbits and post-capitalism steel pan orb-gazing street vendor lady. Then a ‘be kind’ reminder en route to Brutalist Barbican for @facesplacesfilm 👣 First lone wander in 10+ weekends, London I set out soggy footed, unexpecting and you always open my eyes / brain / belly, curiosity-soothe me 💕📷➡️
Battersea
#Battersea. So shiny and self-sufficient, like a centreparcs village plonked in the middle of the city. Miss the London grit that roots things, the backstreet chaos but struck by awe of mass crane monsters and gleaming steel: 📷➡️ Fab lolly dunked scaffolding; soot-stained brick vs new glass; #RearWindow flats, transparent lives; huge bridges joining up to the real world, a destination; modern art; Tonkotsu under the old railway arches; it’s own supermarket and spa; deck chairs by the bridge side; carnival bunting and plant pots; arch titled ‘power’ and walls that spoke its own rhythm: “Machine survivor. Time lapse, parallel universe, algorithm” while the cranes sing regeneration climbing up into those bright blue skies.
In a world that's always on 