The universal shift of focus
from being to seeming
permeates our age of confusion.
Blog
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A poem: November
The vanishing words,
the vanishing images,
the shedding
of selves like autumn leaves;
of withered lives on wrinkled paper,
dust off the treasure chest
in the desert, next to a snake
regenerating its skin
polished,
your porcelain appearance melting into
the undefined-
does the new verse annihilate
or build you?
perhaps it is the fading portrait
either that, or the smile in between
either that, or the infinite encounters
with the ineffableYou write, you cross out
another identity and over to
another vision. -
Dolls and witch balls
York Castle Museum period rooms and Victorian aesthetic:
I. Reconstruction of a Victorian parlour, re-imagining the life of a middle class family residing in the York suburbs of the 19th century.
II. 19th century Moorland Cottage: the living room of a rural cottage.
III. 1700s Dining room book
IV. Victorian Street, shot from above, with a view of the Victorian hearse.
V. Dead end alley, with clothes hung for drying from the upper floors, and a paper warning residents about city water diseases. Right next to this, there is an old clothes’ shop.
Stepping on the grounds of York Castle Museum is an enchanting experience, with its accurately designed period rooms, gloomy Victorian streets, fashion displays, artefacts, people dressed in authentic clothing, galleries, train simulation, projections of actors on dark cell walls telling real stories from the prison records, and so much to think about when you read the inscriptions.
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Poetry
Awaiting ❅
Butterflies spiralled in silver –
petals sleeping on the floor
Eternally moved, I quiver-
Tenderly pressed against the door.Of the senses ❅
Nostalgia persists
soft as velvet,
sad as lace,
sweet and intoxicating
as your scent sliding down my spine.The fragrant city ❅
Through the alleys,
scents of old seasons
scatter in the urban rain.
Guided by our roots,
the long-withered dreams of being
seem to be reborn from pain.Midnight ❅
Weak,
gently wrapped in white
I seek
a cure for the night.Purgatory ❅
I feel
I love
and then I hate
my fire and my demons,
just before I see your celestial smile,
you icy devil
bringing me back to life,
to an illusion of life
which I knowingly accept as truth.
My complicity – dispersed in time
until it is forgotten
The world – no longer in black and white
it burns
I am only ashes.Identity ❅
Fragrant relics of the heart
crown you as the faerie queen over
the land of forgotten whims
with a rose delicately smothered in your hands
and pearls hanging from your pale thin neck
A down-to-earth Snow White is what I see in you
when all that matters is how you see yourself.Elevation ❅
When the past smells like dust,
its enchantment is upon you no more –
The future glows in sight
on the island of apples
where you dwell feasting upon eternity
and upon everything born out of a lavish ground.
everything – corporeal and incorporeal gathers up
and you find yourself among nymphs, dryads, witches,
heroes, mad men of both virtues and vices,
unearthly fruits and singing crystals,
air and waters sprinkled with glitter,
and a crystalline laughter travelling with the wind.Memories of snowdrops ❅
The snowdrop-scented incense extinguishes
It smells like childhood dreams
It smells like us
in a cornfield
or in our garden
laughing and uncaring
just before I went on the hill
with my kite
laughing,
uncaring.Carved ❅
Red wine, dripping down your lily flesh
like paper tingled by tears of blood
from the wounds of your carved spirit.Pulse ❅
You lay on the river shore
Half awake and spellbound
by the water flowing
rhythmically,
echoing the flow of blood,
mirroring the flow of time.
Illusions bewitch your mind and body into acting strangely-
The past creeps up and there you are:
Standing still in the infinite white space
of children unborn.As below, so above ❅
This place is a crypt and, while you’re all waiting
to go on a long journey,
you admire the countless tiles
bearing the scars of the bodies in front of them-
their motionless, diffuse shadows
never making you wonder what they hide
for, as you see their faces, you can tell
you’re all made of the same substance
and that’s all that seems to matter down there,
on the Underground platform.
No mystery in your flesh and bones,
no light at the end of the tunnel,
no heaven to dream of inside the collective tomb,
you are in this together.Addiction ❅
My shadow on your wall, crumbling
as you wake up from the shivers
entering you like poison-
slowly, from your mouth
passing through your stomach and
limbs in silence,
then back to the skull
By the moon, my black hair
is cast behind you,
Your sickness now caught in my spider web.DM, 2014-2017
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Reflections in puddles
On a rainy day in late July, I went for a stroll in Hyde Park to capture moving images of nature. I was particularly on a quest of finding moments and details that would otherwise perhaps pass without being noticed or fully admired – abstract elements inducing reverie. My favourite bits were the beautiful reflections of the trees, with wind-blown branches, the skies, and the clouds into the puddles disturbed by occasional raindrops.
The scenery was a bit gloomy, yet calm and breathtaking nonetheless. These clips were part of my final project, Requiem for the Awakening.
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Pleasures in life
My happiness is sometimes derived from:
The scents of acacia flowers, honeysuckle and snowdrops; the taste of greengages.
Moments when I feel I love what I am doing: when I get excited while reading research or creative writing – and, consequently, when I feel like I can contribute to the research or I can create stories – either through words or photographs. When I am inspired – to create and to live fully.
Meeting people I truly connect with. Everything is genuine and pure, everything flows, the masks are left aside, and no one questions another’s words or feelings. You just know what is happening, share the same smile, and are able to live, truly live in each other’s company without performing. The feeling of belonging.
Peace of mind, in general, or moments of blissful lightheartedness. When every veil of worry, gloom or heaviness is lifted up and I feel unconditional love and self-love within. This is also when I can appreciate every simple aspect of being. It even feels like my body is lighter, like I float, just as my thoughts do.
Wandering in fantasy worlds reminiscent of my childhood.
Running. Setting goals and accomplishing them.
Finding a film I am profoundly touched by. If you know me, you know how intensely I can immerse into films. I become the character, I live the films when I watch them. The pleasure consists in the experience itself, in losing and finding yourself in a concept or a story. It can be revealing, too.
Adventures. waterfalls. explorations in nature; admiring its grandeur, but also the grandeur of an old temple or a rich urban or futuristic noir-looking area.
Those rare moments my writing always eventually comes back to; the ones I try to grasp through words, but fail. Those surreal moments.
Living in a place decorated by me, where I can have my own space, a secret garden where my pet would dwell, and arch-shaped windows. The decor would be elegantly dark in some rooms, fantasy-like in others, and there will be at least one room with everything in it white and light (see Valerie’s room from “Valerie and her Week of Wonders”). There would be Gothic art, paintings spanning different cultures, motifs, and ages – with a preference for Pre-Raphaelite depictions of mythological scenes, candlelit rooms at night, and classical and dark atmospheric music filling the hallway. Ideally, I’d have this variety of design styles to suit my whims.
To mention a one-off: Hearing Sharon den Adel’s angelic voice for the first time, and seeing her on stage at Artmania Festival.
What makes you happy?
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British Cemeteries
“A Dream within A Dream”
St Georges Fields, the former Woodhouse Cemetery, is the perfect place for eerie strolls. When architecture and trees submerge in the dreamlike fog, everything looks surreal. -
Hebden Bridge ruins
We arrived at the Hebden Bridge train station: On our side – flowers and yellow bricks, on the other side- a wall of trees. Overall, there was an aura of dreamlike atemporality.
Remember “Life on a train platform” by Octavian Paler. Remember that Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath graced the valleys of this town with their presence. Sylvia Plath: enrapturing writer, with a devouring lyricism wrapped around her being. I still have to finish her Unabridged Journals, having started reading them at Essex.
They buried her in the small village of Heptonstall, not far away from Hebden Bridge. As expected, Heptonstall is my future destination, together with The Brontës’ moors. Yorkshire nature, with its trails of whispers, is full of literary references, and exploring it is a wonderful experience, bleak at times, but wonderful nonetheless.Sitting at the Stubbing Wharf, a pub from Hebden Bridge with Plath, Hughes writes his reflections in the eponymous poem from Birthday Letters:
“This gloomy memorial of a valley,
The fallen-in grave of its history,
A gorge of ruined mills and abandoned chapels,
The fouled nest of the Industrial Revolution
That had flown.” – Ted Hughes, Birthday LettersPlath writes about the Bronte Moors:
“There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.[…]
The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their dirty wool-clouds,
Grey as the weather.[…]
I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.
The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among the horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.” – Sylvia Plath, Wuthering Heights
DIANA MARIN 