Loserrrrr

Words | 01/05/2007 at 02:25:33

Here's a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/books/review/Moore.t.html?ex=1178078400&en=2bb63399bfcd77ee&ei=5070"> link</a> to a recent review I did for the New York Times Book Review. The book is called The Art of Losing. It's pretty depressing and claustraphobic in places, but moves along at a snappy and massively compelling pace.

Icicles out the window

Photos | 16/02/2007 at 23:13:31

All the snow from the storm on Valentine's Day has iced over, making the world outside bright, shiny and extremely treacherous. This icicle hangs from a rose bush just outside our window.

Arnold Arboretum - October 21, 2006

Words | 16/02/2007 at 22:39:56

I have never considered until this moment how full of life the autumn is. Perhaps it is the cumulative experience of too many London autumns, excessively rainy and windy as they are, collars up and eyes down, the leaf mulch squelching brown underfoot, a sodden mass, coaxed into giving up their colours far too soon. Giving up, I should say, what little colour they had, for, and I know not why, the colours of the fall back home have none of the explosive reds and fiery oranges of the New England fall, showing, perhaps, a glimmer of the famed British reserve. But here, the colours are remarkable. No acquiescence or quiet surrender here in the face of winter but instead some sort of parting shot on behalf of life.

The yellow Hickory leaves on the ground beneath me are slick like Wellington boots from the previous evening’s rain, some waving a little in the breeze as if to say, ‘I’m still here!’ – if only just. The sunlight falls on autumn’s spoils in jigsaw-shaped patches. The Hickory tree itself is quite a specimen – a Shagbark Hickory – with a whiteish-grey bark that runs almost in rivulets, crisscrossing here, straightening there, spilling downwards, it seems, to the base of the tree. It has an almost corrugated feel to it and strips of the bark peel here and there, lifting and curling at the ends, no doubt lending the tree its shaggy name. There is a greenish lichen growing around the base, a very light, dusty sort, roughly the colour of Eau de Nile, that travels up the bark no more than a couple of feet off the ground.

There are still plenty of flies around, it seems – several bluebottles are warming themselves on the Hickory bark. Every now and then a smaller sort of fly lands on my page. He is not easily dissuaded from stopping. The white of the paper throws him into sharp relief, his strange, staccato movements making me feel as though he and I aren’t even sharing the same time but rather that he is a stop-motion creation superimposed on this world. My world, I suppose. He rubs his front feelers together obsequiously, rather like Uriah Heep, and then takes off without warning.

The wind has a dry, raspy voice, constant, rising and falling conversationally. The other noise here has a similar tone, if lower in pitch – it’s the unmistakable hum of cars on the Arborway, somewhere on the other side of the park. I find it difficult sometimes to not hear man-made things in nature itself, the occasional bursts of insect noise sounding like the buzz of a refrigerator or the whir of an air conditioning unit. I’ve lived in a city all my life; I suppose it’s unavoidable.

Found some strange rotten messes of what I assume was once fruit under a group of Black Walnuts – presumably unrelated. They have a rough, almost lemony skin, mottled and bruised, revealing a matted, spongy, fibrous core, oozing a shiny black liquid, like oil, from deep within. They remind me somewhat of the long lost tennis balls my brother and I found at the bottom of the garden when we were young and are slightly springy underfoot.

Stumbled across a very serious and sombre Norwegian Spruce with its branches curving downwards, giving it a hangdog aspect. It’s as if the tree were suffering patiently these last excesses and frivolities of his rowdy neighbours, this last pageant of summer, desperately looking forward to the winter fast.

Spotted some small berries clinging to the fencing on the way out of the park – surely poisonous – all purple and teal, the colour of welts, slightly opalescent and speckled all over with tiny, darkish spots. They danced merrily in the breeze, ugly and beautiful all at the same time.

Ogunquit, Maine - January 2007

Photos | 05/02/2007 at 05:39:32

Lloyds...still beautiful

Photos | 15/06/2006 at 15:39:26

Working on an assignment last weekend, I had the pleasure of shooting some of my favourite buildings around London. Lloyds may have a newer, more glamourous neighbour (the Gherkin) over the road now, but the building looks to me as elegent and beautiful as ever.