Simon Spanton

"Out on the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed, gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan..." To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

"There were old sofas and mattresses, more than were needed. There were dozens of orange boxes as well, standing in corners and brimming over with books and magazines, all of them saved from dustbins and rubbish heaps. It was a Borrible paradise."

Small rain dancing gold in the wind and the sun.

Spherical portalage.

Cooking tea music.

The heavens speed thee in thine enterprise!

As well as the previously mentioned LOTR reading by @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social, Roseanna has also been doing her own excellent reading. Which, stupidly, I am even more behind on, but here's the latest. Where there is much sadness.

Childhood trauma, you say?

Damn...

I am late catching up with the latest installment of Abigail's Tolkien Reread but it is another excellent entry. Treebeard!

"The dying Cosimo, at the second when the anchor rope passed near him, gave one of those leaps he used so often to do in his youth, gripped the rope, with his feet on the anchor and his body in a hunch, and so we saw him fly away, taken by the wind, scarce braking the course of the balloon..."

This incredible creature.

"He looked at the beast they were speaking of, a sphinx who prowled up and down on the beach in front of the hotel terrace where they were all sitting under a bamboo awning. Champagne and white grapes in a crystal bowl were on the table. Enamel sea and sky stretched out to the horizon..."

Post of the week.

"The vision that comes to all the makers of the world, before they make a new thing, whether it be a song, or a sword, or a chalk-cut horse, half a hillside high." The genius of Rosemary Sutcliff.

Hugleikur Dagsson

"Oh the poor tired rain, still dripping. A very wet man walks, not quite not skipping. Sings to himself, determined to preserve his Sense of gaiety in spite of circumstances." From "The Song and Dance Man" by Alice Oswald

"He shot Roy Baty; the big man's corpse lashed about, toppled like an over-stacked collection of separate brittle entities; it smashed into the kitchen table and carried dishes and flatware down with it. Reflex circuits in the corpse made it twitch and flutter, but it had died. Rick ignored it."

"This time I must not blot a line. No revision, no second thoughts. Down it shall go. Already I am terrified. I have none of the tools of my trade. No row of pencils, no pencil sharpener, no drink. The standing jump."

The garden furniture has been stowed in the shed and we are watching Labyrinth. #stormupdate

Fabulous.

"He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable - and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him."

The sad King and Queen and the smooth Bone Tree.

"Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all this empty quarry with its old nuclear bunker and lots of old huts."

On this morning's walk.

"As she kept walking she noticed classrooms filled with strange things; one contained a dust storm, another a dying landscape lit by a large, red sun. One classroom appeared to be a storeroom of a shop. Bundles wrapped in brown paper lay silently on the shelves besides piles of sparkling geodes..."

"And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last."

State of it.

On this morning's walk.

This morning.

"And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously."

Sealed portalage. (Zoom in for seams.)

"Those were the broad days! Time was when I could walk and sing all day and hear no more than the echo of my own voice in the hollow hills. The woods were like the woods of Lothlórien, only thicker, stronger, younger. And the smell of the air! I used to spend a week just breathing."

Melville hitting hard.

"Then another clear voice, as young and as ancient as Spring, like the song of a glad water flowing down into the night from a bright morning in the hills, came falling like silver to meet them..."

Post of the week.

Laurie Anderson's excellent contribution to the Amelia Earhart discourse.

OH HELLO.

When I lived in London I used to keep a note of every cormorant I saw as I cycled along the canal to work, now I live in Edinburgh and I keep a note of every curlew I see on the pitches I walk past with the dog. Life comes at you slow.

Twenty-eight curlews on the school rugby pitch.

Lol. Not seen a better demonstration of 'desire path'

Layered portalage.

Cooking basa curry for tea music.

John Atkinson Grimshaw painting of a distant figure on a spooky, moonlight shadowed lane but sunlight and a photograph instead.

"It was difficult to tell where dust-starred hill ended and star-dusted sky began."

Aquatic fowl, or tech startups?

"Clinging to my position, witnessing the seasonal migrations, I must try to content myself with the perception that love and truth have no wings, but are resident like me here, practising their sub-song quietly in the face of the bitterest of winters." From Retirement by R.S. Thomas