Ella Rose Muse: the story: Locks and Leaves

Wednesday 3 July 2013

Locks and Leaves

As practically everyone who's ever met me will know, I am not at my best when packing for trips away. Obviously, I'm very excited about the trips that I get to do, and packing now takes me a lot less time than the 2-3 days it used to take me when I was younger (yes, seriously, I would spend days upon days arranging about 5000 outfits on the floor and pondering the possibilities for a one-week trip to Majorca, or Tenerife, or wherever it was we were going as a family). I'm quite good at understanding the idea that outfits can be worn more than once on a trip, now, thank God; not to mention that I don't need to allow for five or so 'options' per day.

Still, a few of the more mundane things I did today instead of packing:

- hoovering (though to an extent I actually don't mind hoovering)

- ironing (I hate ironing with a passion - almost as much as I hate packing, except that it makes me angrier, so this didn't help me much in any way other than ensuring I don't turn up looking like a wreck but instead have vaguely neat clothes - which will for the most part not be worn anyway because nudes look rubbish with dresses on)
- napping (only very briefly, but it felt right...)

- answering emails (very productive, eh?)

In the end, packing has taken me very little time (though, admittedly, I have paused mid-pack, for tradition's sake) since I am now fairly close to nailing the skills of a good friend of mine in Vancouver who I once watched spend roughly three minutes breezily picking up a few choice items from her room and depositing them into a tiny bag for a trip we did to Seattle/San Francisco (while I looked on in absolute awe), but really, it's times like these I wish I was more of a minimalist, or just less of a 'Oooh, I might want to use this thing I never ever use and definitely won't need but might not be able to buy out there' person!

So, now that I've got the 'middle class problem' of 'Oh, damn I have to pack for Iceland' out the way, I might as well mention something else I caught myself saying out loud a couple of weeks ago. I was trying to show a friend some countries on a map (don't ask; the friend shall remain anonymous) but failed to reach the globe easily enough to swizzle it around, so I then tried to show her on another globe in a different room but failed to locate the plug to switch the globe's light on, since the corner of the room it was in is quite dark... (I'm realising as I type this that I'm struggling with telling this story and am going to just give up and get straight to the 'punch line' (see no.5 of 'Very British Problems' here): basically I ended up blurting out in frustration, 'Urgh, all my globes are so awkwardly placed!'. I think that would qualify for being on that 'middle class problems' buzzfeed, maybe. I embarrass myself so much with the utter drivel that comes out of my mouth sometimes.

ANYWAY, that was all a completely unnecessary (and probably really boring - sorry!) detour from the fact that I am updating my blog (not packing) quickly before I go away on this next trip, to tide over anyone who likes looking at it. The following images were taken by Steven Bruce, whose photography I love (and who also did these with me), in a Californian garden where I modelled alongside Meghan, who has also featured on this blog a few times before, because she is, to use an Americanism, awesome.

Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,
by a mystic golden light.
My head soaked in river water.
I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They called
a horse out of the woodland.
"Take her there, through the desert shores."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.
You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.
The banquet for the shadows.
Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.
Came upon the headdress.
It was gilded, dark and golden.
The children sang.
I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my hand
smells like the feel of an old school desk,
the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent
my armpits sound a bass note strong
as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp
as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,
on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape
of my neck, just where you might bend
your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleet
of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.

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Wednesday 3 July 2013

Locks and Leaves