the meek sun revives
stone hearts warm and swell with blood
Lazarus life light
On cold days the sun provides that warmth to lift even the coldest heart, to force a smile, to melt, even by a tiny amount, a sadness. Here are some photos I took in Centenary Wood and the place I keep returning to, the Pond on the moors. That solitary swan seems to be living there now, it makes me sad to think he or she might have lost their mate.
All copyright to photos © Mel Melis
scarlet seamstress works
from the beating heart outward
hare formed from fine twine
It was the last weekend of Animals Inside Out at the Natural History Museum. I popped down early on Saturday to check it out.
I’d previously been to see Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds exhibition many years ago when it first toured London. I have a both an admiration, yet a certain ambivalence to his work. I guess, and preposterous as it sounds, despite my love and support of science, there is still some deep seated superstition within me which makes me uneasy around death. Especially when the corpses (plastinised or not) are playing flippin’ tennis or something equally mundane.
Luckily, there wasn’t a giant squid playing tennis against a bull in this exhibition. It was educational, with a real art aesthetic that made you gasp and look deeply. The animals all had died of natural causes, but it still made me sad to see such magnificent animals displayed in this way. The elephant seemed especially haunting somehow. Not because von Hagens had done anything wrong, it just seems sad that so many animals are at threat of extinction and soon our knowledge of them will be driven from travelling sideshows such as these.
The pedestals with the small animals, such as the Hare below were beautiful. Every capillary captured. The tiny tracks of where blood once flowed.
I also popped next door, to the Science Museum, where they had an Alan Turing exhibition. This is Alan Turing year, it would have been his 100th birthday. What a genius. What a sad story.
a weary fist made
skin hidden blood relentless
heart’s dull thud homing
I’m no good at giving blood. I write about blood and gore a lot in my short stories, but when it comes to my own, I feel feint and go pale. Silly really.
Keen eyed, Fan tailed, Hunts,
Wind tamed above the hedgerows,
Flutters, wings and heart.
I made and wrote this for Debbie today. I even did colouring in like a big boy! (see below). I went for a run earlier on and saw a Kestrel, maintaining its position in the sky, using it’s tail and rapid wing beats to expertly adjust for wind buffeting. I ran right underneath it, it eventually soared off to another field edge, once again scanning the ground for movement and a meal.
I’m quite proud of the drawing, as it actually looks a little bit like a Kestrel and not some sort of plucked mini-vulture after a recent flame throwing incident.
You don’t have to be good at art (or writing!). Sometimes it’s the little things on Valentines day.
Well, what a treat (?!), two Haikus today. I popped into the Grant Museum of Zoology after work. There’s an interesting exhibition on animals creating art, I’ll post about that on my main blog.
But the Haikus today are about two things:
- Some primate skeletons watching the visitors from their high vantage point in the gallery, skeletal CCTV (old Charles Darwin lived on Gower Street).
- And a model of an elephants heart, on average these are an incredible 20 - 30kg’s in weight.
Grinning gallery,
Guests of the clergyman’s son,
Old bleached relatives,
Dust kicked, wise eyes weep,
Beneath grey furrows, her hide,
Blood pulses. Slow. Deep.
