seasons | messy retrospectacles

Yelling for Yellows

Posted on April 28, 2019 by Christine

When I was yelling for yellows

Months ago I walked through the fading yellows of late October and as rapidly as they had been washed away into the gutters of mid-November I had forgotten them.

Early November Artefact

By Christmas, with all its never-ending candlelight, my eyes had grown tired from watching flickering flames. After New Year and all through the month of January I calmed down with the soothing yellow of an Italian cushion.

Lush Italian Cushions

In February, I started buying lemons from Turkey, just to stare at their yelling yellows. But as much as I begged they wouldn’t stay until spring and so I consumed the lemons instead.

The Yelling Yellow of Lemons

When in March all the flowershops sold tulips from Dutch hothouses I took down the still-life leaning behind some diaries against the wall on my bookshelf. With the coming and going of the seasons I had forgotten about the four yellow tulips and their promise of spring.

Yellow Tulips (Oil on canvas)

I inhaled the sweeping return of light which was orchestrated by stormy, brown brushstrokes against the background of earth and I went out for a first spring walk.

Seasons

Carpe Diem

Image | Posted on April 24, 2018 by Christine

Pluck the day

So, Jupiter has granted us another hot summer. Maybe the last one before some terror strikes or an armada of stinging jellyfish will send us screaming right in front of TV cameras.

Right now we’re fearless and scorn the threats of sunburns and the like. We stand together, we down our drinks and in the early hours of the new day we’ve finally plucked the last one. There’s no need of plucking anyway as our days fall from the skies like ripe fruit, ripe with sunshine, beer and sandy beaches.

All our yesterdays are oblivious of their tomorrows, and no litter left behind. No fingerprint, no scribbled word or photograph, no laugh nor skin. Just empty spaces and the writing on the wall: CARPE DIEM

Encounters, seasons

Winter (1) Blind windows

Image | Posted on February 23, 2018 by Christine

Winter Loneliness

The early sunset of winter inflames the sky like a war photography. Danger lingers but the fake spectacle quickly fades into a dull nightfall. The rest of daylight is being reflected by the dark windows of the house upon a hill. Nobody at home, nowhere. Nothing is behind the hostile shimmer but the ghosts of the day.

Less Time In February

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Christine

From gloss and glamour to loss and clamour …

The problem with handbags is the following: you overload! Overloading usually results in excessive digging, meaning that at crucial moments you are absolutely unable to come up with the object needed, as for example, your favourite lipstick. Rumour says that even feminists have been caught in the act of emptying the contents of their bags on a car roof or a tiny French bistro table. Needless to say that from both locations their handbag intimacies invariably slide or drop down to some grimy ground which will give any woman a serious fit. A jam-packed handbag is always prone to accidents as, e.g., by rupture of wafer-thin, fancy bag straps, by the breaking away of shiny snap hooks or the splitting open of glitzy metal rings. The effect is always the same, your handbag will drop down from your shoulder like a stone. Big drama! You need impro!

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Two ladies being at ease with jam-packed handbags (Affordable Art)

When taking out my classic blue Life Handbag on a rainy Oxford day, a snap hook drama struck right on Broad Street. Bang! Solutions had to be found quickly! As clutching a well-packed handbag for longer than twenty minutes is unacceptable, I first tried sticky tape, which proved to be unsuitable and led to another clamorous downfall. After searching a number of shops in vain for something to fix the snap hook, a helpful shop assistent in a charming craft store finally found me some hellish Super Glu which I administered on the disfunctional hook very carefully while riding the Oxford Tube to London. In the process, I had to unpack the contents of my handbag on the empty neighbouring seat and – gosh- what freaky objects did I find in my handbag! And – gosh – where were all those unsuspiciuous objects I actully had supposed to dig up from the depth of my bag? I suddenly understood: My life chance of a ‘What-is-in-my-bag’ – photo event had come! And here we go.

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In the photo, from left to right: Din5 standard leather calendar 2015, favourite retractable pencil, pocket mirror from Bodleian Library shop, super glu for metal snap hooks, ancient Swiss knife with 3 functions, favourite blackberry-coloured lipstick, freaky, black plastic cutlery of uncertain origins Not in the photo: powder compact Le Blush Creme, umber pocket comb, all kinds of receipts, cards, tickets, snippets safely stored away in the calendar pockets

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Not in the photo: Catweazle Club handout, lengthy novel on Kindle App, quality fountain pen In the photo, clockwise: tablet PC, black leather case with two pockets for fountain pen, give-away promotional ballpen, turtoise shell fixing comb, snakeskin leather purse

A visual presentation of “Whatsinmybag” is a big challenge because those rather profane private belongings which are brought to daylight mostly lack gloss and glamour. So the way of arranging the profanities in the shooting is imperial. On my comfortable Oxford Tube the location was dominated by the wildly patterned orange seat covers, a circumstance I had to submit to and therefore embraced as a neo-realistic, anti-lifestyle message to the world. YES, no lying about the contents in my bag! YES, I crossed my fingers after writing the last sentence! YES, the objects lack gloss and glamour! YES, my bag tells you stories of loss and clamour! YES, the myth of my handbag is flamboyant! NO, I won’t share my secrets!

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Not in the photo: red-rimmed stylish glasses, smartphone in white case, little blue addressbook In the photo, from left to right: soft casing for sunglasses, green cleaning cloth, present from Bodleian Library shop for a friend

(2) Timeless in January

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Christine

Understanding handbags

Visions

Understanding what handbags mean to women is a complicated matter. You might compare handbags to the mystery of cats and adapt T.S. Eliot’s “The naming of cats”:

“The buying of handbags is a difficult matter,

It isn’t just a profane afterwork deed.

You may think it’s as simple as a rattle’s clatter,

But believe me, at least SEVEN bags does a woman need!”

Cool Reptile

In any case, handbags need to have the appeal of a hidden universe. If you want to understand handbags imagine a museum, preferably a private collector’s museum like Pitt Rivers in Oxford, and there you are with the elementary philosophy of a handbag.

The Universal Bag

Impossible to foresee which unique objects will show up from the depths of your bag and unfathomable the variety of indispensable valuables you need to store!

Bling Mysteries

A good handbag will not only hold together your everyday universe but it will also go with you anywhere. Big or small, it doesn’t matter. Day by day, you’ll sling your breathtaking, portable, private collection over your shoulder – or you’ll just clutch it with one hand – and off you go! You’re the director, the collector, the curator, the visitor, the doorman, the adorer and restorer – a fancy-free, footloose one-woman show.

Post Scriptum: Handbags are irreconcilably at odds with umbrellas. So you should better look for umbrella-carrying company on rainy days.

seasons

(1) Timeless in January

Image | Posted on January 21, 2016 by Christine

January

Taking a walk in January, I look at the world in wonder: Everything – except people – holds still and wants to be noticed. Like the frozen willow tree which is laid back against the icy surface of the lake similar to an artist’s naked model on a blue divan.Through the elfish branches and twigs of an alder tree with its hundreds of small, brown cones I look at a pale half-moon which is already up before sunset. The moon is moving slowly and time is sheltered in a winter capsule. No ticking away of time units, ducks keep silent, wind has long blown away the tiny seeds of the alder cones.

January has space and freedom.Those twelve months of the year are spread out before you like an uncharted continent to explore and to map out. January makes you imagine spring colours and speculate about weather reports of summer days still to come. Where to travel, what to read and when to dance! Your unspoken plans meander from improving your finances or your wardrobe to refurnishing the kitchen and from there to getting hold of a ticket for a concert staging Sir Simon at the piano, accompanying his mezzo-soprano wife, yes, at the piano!

In January you will take out your opinionated ear plugs and be all ears to the world again – even to politicians and other prepotent people in charge. Again, it’s January unplugged!

But one day – most certainly the 22nd – all of a sudden and out of the blue, some chrono-addicted, unrelaxed, hyper-disciplined supermiser will stick a new year’s annual calendar right into my contemplative life and I’ll gasp: “God gracious, it’s January 22nd! Already!”

Suddenly, I will remember meeting my neighbour in the underground parking space and hear him answering to my new year wishes: “Don’t know about new year. To me it’s already over, had my birthday on January 1st!” Poor fellow citizen, to be confronted with his annual calendar right on the first day of January, year by year! No timeless moments in January, no unplanned visions of colour and change!

And while I am hastily scribbling down my overdue to-do list right into my brown leather agenda, eagerly restoring chronology of time, an image pops up in my mind. It’s showing what I had in my handbag when I rode the coach from Oxford to London. I saw, I considered, I whispered:

“Tell me, Chronos, when is the moment to write about women’s handbags and their contents?!

IF AT ALL, IN JANUARY! Hurry up!

seasons

Autumn Afternoon

Image | Posted on October 19, 2015 by Christine

Summer declines, days decrease. Autumn is in everything, colouring fruits and leaves, deepening the blue of the sky and the yellow of the afternoon sun. You can never have enough of autumn colours. They are so physical, almost like food. Manna bread from the sky at the end of summer.

Wet foliage on the lake slope

Wetness comes with the autumn fog and bleaches the colours out of nature. Glancing over the lake I can no longer make out the distinct silhouettes of trees along the opposite shore line. They have melted into grey shadows and like a silent fleet they are sailing away to some unseen sunny continent. In their luggage they carry the greens with them.

Autumn fog and red light

A red traffic-light in the grey distance makes me smile.

seasons

Summer Pleasures – Splash!

Image | Posted on August 11, 2015 by Christine

Riding Wild Waters

The fragmented beauty of the surf and the cascading water is caught in a time capsule – just as long as the surfer is splitting the wave open with his ride. A sparkling moment in time and you want to watch it again and again. But then it’s getting somewhat chilly and all of a sudden rain is coming down in sheets. So, you let your time capsules whoosh down the river – uncaught – and instead seek protection against the summer down-pour under your tartan-colored umbrella. Not exactly a time capsule but an intimate hide-away from further mind-expanding experiences. Walking away from the wild waters, you can’t hear the thundering rush of the wave any longer.

Summer Pleasures

Posted on August 8, 2015 by Christine

Extra Bavariam nulla vita, et si vita, non est ita!

You have created your own picture postcard version of Bavarian Eden. You scrutinize the geranium flowerpots, the wooden glow of the village houses, the healthy green of meadows and trees, the hazy and faintly majestic line of alpine peaks and there isn’t a twist in the pastoral tale. Is there? And then you realize what is missing and you yell into the valley: “Where the hell are the cows?!”

Just turn the picture upside down, you stupid urbanist, they are grazing right below the bottom line of your postcard!

seasons