wintering.
A little winter diary...
On returning from Japan, I moved straight into my new house in Bristol—and immediately discovered that the light in my local park (it's at the end of my street!) is beautiful. And so I spent a lot of time over the winter with my camera in my hand, trying to catch and distil a bit of that light so I could keep it forever.
(Lots of thoughts, as always, about what the still image does; about transience and movement, and the strangely poignant stillness of a photograph.)
It was a cold winter, for Bristol. Frosts came and went. I watched birds and light settle on the land. I watched ice melt. I saw the echo of a birch-tree's patina in a rusted iron fence.
I spent a lot of time looking up—at the moon, at that endless blue you only get in winter-time, at the gradients of an early sunset on the west coast of England...
... and at the little coloured houses that my part of Bristol is so famous for. I'm so lucky to live here!
(Our house would be colourful too, if somebody hadn't clad it in beige pebble-dash some time in the mid/late 20th century.)
I saw in the new year with wonderful old friends, standing at the highest point we could, watching the fireworks flower all over the city sky. It felt like coming home, and it felt like starting again.
On a freezing-cold day, I went back to York and received my Master's degree. I wore a cherry coloured dress, mustard tights, and the reddest lipstick I could.
Spring came...
... and went...
... and came...
... and went...
(How wonderful are plum blossoms in the snow?)
There were even icicles! (Icicles are very hard to photograph when your hands are numb and you have only your phone with you.)
And, finally (I hope), spring came for real. The clocks went forward, and suddenly I'm waking with the slow light once again. I'm planting seeds (literal and figurative). It's a time of waiting, a time of opening-up. I want to be brave and fragile, like a blossom.
