Dawn Revisited

Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don't look back,

the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
int he prodigal smell of biscuits-
eggas and susage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You'll never know
who's down there, frying those eggs,
if you don't get up and see.

Rita Dove from On the Bus with Rosa Parks

Its National Poetry Day - if you send an SAE to The Scottish Poetry Library (NPD), Crichton Court, High Street, Edinburgh you will get a pack of poetry postards back.

Bee Lavender great name great blog.

... the future for the art world is on the land. Don your cap and get your welly boots on, because it's the farmer now who holds the key to not just the countryside idyll, but contemporary art. The future for art galleries is now to be found in the huge expanse of grain stores and byres that litter the countryside of Scotland.

More at Artwork Scotland - I'm hoping to visit Skateraw this weekend. I've had a soft spot for Mr Demarco as an ex-flatmate of mine related to me that his rather stroppy cat called Anna got fed up with her humans becoming part time lodgers at her home so she put all her belongings into a kerchief and hopped over the wall to live with Mr Demarco and seems very happy and loved.

Like artistic and literary movements, social movements are driven by imagination. I am not speaking here only of the songs and poems and paintings that have always been part of movements for political and social change, but of the movements themselves, their political ideas and forms of protest. Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope for the future emerges.

Susan Griffin

Everything is connected

For you, the brilliantly obvious theme of today's solar eclipse is self-respect, which is just the miracle you need. This is the one issue on which your whole life, and all its successes and failures, have hung in the balance. It's not easy changing our ideas about ourselves. They are written deeply in our character, often below where we can see them working. Often, we don't know they're there. Yet you really are being relieved of false information that simply has not served you. And this will make room for many possibilities that serve you very well - possibilities you have never considered before.

From Jonathan Cainer this morning.

Wow ! so relevant in the past year or so I have been shedding so many ideas about myself and turning so much of my past recieved wisdom on its head. One of the big things is I've updended my ideas about money and how much I need, how much I deserve, and how much I can get. I've only just beginning to peel away the limiting views I have about money in my own personal case. What has changed me hasn't been books but actually listening and taking on board what my best friends are saying. That is that I am valuable and have value to offer. So even though I am broke at the moment I don't feel broke or as broke as I would have felt previously because I have faith that I will find the right thing to earn me a decent amount of money.

George Szirtes

the poet and translator has a blog - link from my friend R

Another writers blog Dogpoet.

lack of posts

can be blamed on 'Hello' I've been trying to finish posting my G8 photos and seem to manage to get one or two up per week.

In the meanwhile I've been busy slogging through the unattractive parts of being creative. The parts which people who sigh and say 'I wish I was doing something creative' don't want to be reminded of. In this case pouring over websites in Norwegian trying to make an educatated guess at the websites owners business and contacting them and then waiting and waiting and waiting for a response. My grumpy cynical and defeated side says 'And you know what we'll do all this WORK and then the reason why we are doing it will be taken away.'

Note to self devise a creative project which is not dependent on anyone else having to say 'yes' to. No permissions needed.

Inbetween I fill my days by looking for work, doing some freelance work for a friend, and sorting out the dreaded tax.

I've been consuming much culture recently and have decided that I need the input of the very best. Its all very well to see something and think 'I could do better than that' but its even better to see something like a magnificent meal and know its something you want to work towards.

To this end I saw 6 films by Eisenstein, Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery and reading My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.

I'm filling myself by walking beside the sea and today after seeing to my defrosting fridge I'm going to write a wish list of things I'd like to do before Christmas. This is the time of year which most feels like a new year to me.

Jan Phillips

from nun to photographer, muscian and teacher.

people listening to speeches, music and a live link to London's concert

people queuing to get on the march

Discardia - a new holiday

On Discardia

Need some inspiration to get you through the weekend's nesting projects? Dinah Sanders invites you to celebrate Discardia, a floating holiday which, in her words, "doesn't involve obligations or expense or overblown expectations of specialness. It does not require you to interact with people whom you do not wish to interact with. In fact, it doesn't require you to do anything."

Instead, Discardia, like Apartment Therapy, is about getting rid of the stuff you don't need in order to make room for the stuff you do love. "Discardia," Dinah says ,"is the time to get rid of things that no longer add value to your life, shed bad habits, let go of emotional baggage and generally lighten your load." Happily, this iteration of the holiday runs until October 3rd.

More info at Apartment Therapy

Sychronistically enough I'd already decided to put some unwanted books for sale at Amazon

I liked the wide age range of protesters.

Welsh Dragon against poverty

Reading Frenzy

This looks like fun and while supporting a great cause (unsung heroines who keep spaces alive for artists and writers) can get a stash of reading for the dark nights ahead.

Free Film event - Ideas Factory

My friend Stuart is hosting the evening devoted to films made with Machinima technology (gaming programmes) on the 22nd Sept 7pm at the Cameo Cinema Edinburgh.

more pictures of Make Poverty History

over on Street Photography. I like this one in particular.

banners tied to railings on Princes St Gardens

the G8 leaders came on the march as well!

there in all their glory