In Occupation.

I said I'd do it and I did. (Which isn't always the case.)
Yesterday I posted a letter to the room I lived in last year, for reasons which I think are explained in a lot of the older posts... Back to waiting for post.

Continuously debated by folklorists for centuries.

Lofty timbers, the walls around are bare.

This is the outcome of a few days on a collaborative project called 'character building'. I don't like performing, and Emily, who I was working with, dislikes horror films, so we ended up with this hopefully quite sinister sort of performance piece, in which I act very out of character, except no-one realises it is me under the sheet anyway. My mother tells me it's hilarious. I don't suppose that's necessarily bad. (The music is a bit of Tom Waits' 'Russian Dance', from the album The Black Rider.)

I had a dream once in which I watched someone taxidermy a live horse.

I'm an escapist. Escapism is the primary motivation of everything I do, as far as I can think. I don't think I'm the only one though, far from it. If you're trying to, at least, most people's activities could be said to be escapist in one way or another. Not above all other motivations, but certainly ever-present.

What I think most people don't do though, is realise this. In the summer, for a few weeks, I was doing a job I didn't enjoy, which involved, primarily, putting napkins and placemats into their packaging to be sold in garden centres and department stores. I suppose it was made worse with my frustration at the people I imagined would be buying the things I was packing. And so I suppose that what I was intending to do here, was shake things up for them a little bit, to intrude a little on what I wearily imagined to be their very narrow world views. (So perhaps demonstrative of how my own views narrow when I start to get fed up.)

The way I went about doing this began in a way that fitted very closely into my days at work; I wrote down quotes from the books I was reading during breaks, things I read on the internet, chosen for their challenging of the mundane, mostly, on pages torn out of the middle of the notebook I had in my bag. I tore each sentence off in a strip, then tucked them into the packets in between the cardboard and the cloth, quite enjoying how often no-one was looking at me or seeing what I did. It wasn't a work of art, it was just a small activity that made the day pass with a little more excitement. After a while, I began to get just as frustrated with myself - I felt that the literary quoting had too much of a sort of naieve high-mindedness and over-righteousness. On top of that, I couldn't help but want to make use of this unusual medium outside of what I could do in my lunch break... I did a few bits at home, and experimented with some less preachy sentences, tried to think what I really wanted to say as well as what I thought should be said. One of these ended up being a short account of a dream I once had, in which I did indeed watch someone perform taxidermy on a live horse, wondering whether or not they'd realised it was still alive. Though I never really got that far with it all before I left.

"It's a curious idea, isn't it?"

...Thanks for the title go to a lady in the National Museum of Scotland for her observations on the Monymusk reliquary. How is it that the bones of a saint and a lethal weapon, (this pistol, also in the NMS,) have ended up with such similar decoration? So, I suppose what I'm attempting here is something to do with where decoration belongs and what it says about the object it is decorating. Something to do with embellishment and enshrinement and some sort of human narrative. Via a teabag, amongst other things.

Reciting Rimbaud, over voicemail.

This is a post partly dedicated to my own handwriting; I lost the notebook that the 'yellow list', amongst other things, was in. (Other things, including a rather maudlin paragraph that included something along the lines of the title of this post.) For a few days, I felt bereaved. I'd think I'd recovered, then remember something else I'd written in it, and just sit there feeling sort of ill. I miss it like a dead pet. Possibly like a child with no friends misses a dead pet.
Aside from that, it'll be next week that whoever is going to be living in the room that I lived in last year will be moving in, so I suppose that soon I'll have some letter writing to do again.
In the meantime... I started taking photos of lights in vegetation, because I've always quite liked lights in vegetation, and no real reason other than that.

I wrote down everything I saw from the train that was yellow.

(I feel like I spend quite a lot of time on trains on my own. This was between London and Grantham, it was an exercise in ...something. Inconsistency and repetition, mostly. I kind of find it funny.)

Yellow line painted along the edge of a platform,
Yellow sign at the entrance to a tunnel as we leave it

Another line along a platform,
a salt and grit bin,
a tariff sign in a car park

some ragwort flowers

more ragwort

McDonalds and Subway signs,
another platform line, more car park signs

ragwort again
platform line
ragwort.

Paintwork on a train going in the other direction,
some graffiti under a bridge, a sign at a junction

a flag outside a showroom,
a sign on the door of an electricity terminal

Ragwort.
Another passing train, another platform line, more ragwort,
some machinery at the side of the track

Ragwort,
a field of ragwort.

Platform edge, again.
Ragwort,
a sign by the side of the track with a number 25 on it,
some fencing at a building site, the end of a passing train, the back of an ambulance.

Car parking barriers.
The roof of a children's push along car on a balcony.

Some flowers in a allotment,
number plates outside a car showroom, graffiti.

Another train.

Platform edge at Hitchin.
Some reels of cable at the side of the track.

Some crash barriers in a car park, the edge of a road sign, some stacked skips.

A sign with a number 34 on.

A metal frame around the top of a pick-up truck,
a burglar alarm on a house,
platform edge,
reflective stripes on a service vehicle,
a sign with a number 37 on,
ragwort.

Some paint on a telegraph pole.

Number plates on a housing estate,
platform egde,
burglar alarm.

Emergency telephone next to the track,
Signs at a sewage works,
ragwort.

Showjumping fences.

Ragwort, graffiti,
signs on some warehouses, numbering doors.

Warning signs at the base of a pylon,
another number.

Ragwort.
A road sign.

Writing on a sign for a builders' merchants, platform edge, ragwort, train end ragwort.

Yellow cover over a trailer.
Yellow box thing,
van at a level crossing,
ragwort,
bollards on a traffic island, graffiti under a bridge,
ragwort.

Platform edge.
Road markings,
piles of plastic tubing.

Graffiti, ragwort, graffiti, ragwort.
Passing train.

Signs on telegraph poles,
something on top of a block of concrete,
ragwort, salt and grit bin, ragwort.

More parked machinery.

Salt and grit bin, writing on lorries, entrance to a warehouse,
a bit of yellow plastic.

Danger of death sign,
graffiti,
danger unsafe roof sign on some garages,
end of another train, another sign about electrocution.

Kwik-Fit sign,
notices on a multi-storey car park,
a yellow car,
paint on the rails.

No trespassing sign on a building site,
burglar alarm, CCTV sign in a station car park, rear number plates, a yellow car.
A man with a yellow shirt on a billboard.
The handrail on the way out of Peterbrough station, a painted barrier, a salt and grit bin.

The back of a parked fire engine,
car park barriers,
stripes on a Network Rail building.
Parked freight trains, paint on a lamp post.

A generator and a floodlight,
more freight trains,
vehicles on a building site.

A blind in a window,
a house painted yellow.

Stripes on post office lorries.

Danger sign at a level crossing,
ragwort,
danger sign at a level crossing.

Number plates at a caravan site, a Jet station,
a crane.

Ragwort.

A danger sign at a power station.

Ragwort.