Parcel

 There are not many books where I look forward to their release date but I always check the shelves of Waterstones to see if any new translation of Tove Jansson's has been published. She is one of my favourite written-word companions and I miss her original and homely voice between books. In my virtual book world of teachers and she is one of the most important, alongside Ruskin and Proust.

 'Art in Nature' is a collection of short stories. originally titled 'Dollhouse' in Swedish. 'Art in Nature' proposes a simple idea. Why not pin a parcel to your wall instead of a painting? Then the mystery of the contents and your imagination can be the work of art.

 A caretaker of a summer exhibition stubbles across a middle-aged couple who are unwittingly trespassing in the grounds of his gallery, grilling sausages by the lake. They are quarrelling over a parcel. Inside is a silk-screen they have just bought but they cannot agree whether it is abstract or not, and if it is, what the subject might be. The caretaker having spent many hours contemplating the exhibition suddenly recalls some conceptual art - picture packages also displayed in the exhibition. He suggests that neither will be disappointed with their purchase if they hang it still fully wrapped onto their wall.

'Maybe you should just imagine what's inside, and then imagine different things...You just need to make the wrapping a little prettier, use more string, you know, fishing line or shoemaker's thread...It's the mystery that's important, somehow very important.'

 Part of the mystery must be that someone else has done the wrapping I feel. Here I have left three items still in their wrappers. Perhaps I will be brave enough to resist opening wrapped art if it comes my way and hang it as it is on our walls.

The New Haven

I am so looking forward to a time when we can just exist in our home. Since we have moved in we have been surrounded by men, plumbers, electricians, joiners, plasterers, and today three chimney sweeps (that has got to be lucky!). They are omnipresent, not one room has been sacred. Until today. We have a lock! A lock, to be more precise, on our shower room door.

And in our new haven is a shelf. And on that shelf there is a book. 

And in the book there are many smaller worlds to escape into.

Balloons

Since Christmas they have lived with us,
Guileless and clear,
Oval soul-animals,
Taking up half the space,
Moving and rubbing on the silk

Invisible air drifts,
Giving a shriek and pop
When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling.
Yellow cathead, blue fish--------
Such queer moons we live with

Instead of dead furniture!
Straw mats, white walls
And these traveling
Globes of thin air, red, green,
Delighting

The heart like wishes or free
Peacocks blessing
Old ground with a feather
Beaten in starry metals.
Your small

Brother is making
His balloon squeak like a cat.
Seeming to see
A funny pink world he might eat on the other side of it,
He bites,

Then sits
Back, fat jug
Contemplating a world clear as water.
A red
Shred in his little fist.
5 February 1963

Sylvia Plath

Clean

We are finally living in our new home. Although it isn't truly functioning like a home quite yet. Every time we need to shower we take a taxi to the other side of town to the home of a relative. The driver invariably asks, 'So what have you planned for tonight then?'. 

 My mother wonders why she can't phone us on the land-line yet. Here is the socket, in a sealed room, waiting for a paint-sprayer to be fixed. 

 Under the sheets are boxes that contain my clothes - those that weren't packed some months ago for what we thought was going to be an eight day camping trip; some food, which I imagine will now be inedible; our calendar with all birthdays noted; a large modular bookcase and many small boxes of paperbacks. Every so often something is missed and we hopelessly note that it must be somewhere within the labyrinth.

 

 Slowly our shower room is taking shape. We spent so much time visualising how we wanted it to be. We shared so many pictures of bathrooms we loved down to the tiniest details such as the way the curtains had been hung; it seems like an old friend even before it has been completed. The room originally was a kitchen and in a truly horrifying state.

 Be glad you cannot smell this picture! One of the labourers who came in to help clear away the old kitchen units had to be excused, the room made him feel so ill. It isn't just the dirt, it is the sadness of the room that it needs to purified of. With clean walls, ceiling and floor, the two large windows will let the sunshine do the rest we hope.