April Moon: Day 5

Focus

What feelings does this word evoke? What sorts of memories does it recall? Which of your senses start to tingle? How would you represent what this word means to you?

I got my camera out on Saturday, the first time in months. I'd made a necklace as a present for somebody, and wanted to take a picture for my portfolio. With the necklace suspended from the window catch, the idea was that the green and pink of the trees outside would blur into a pleasing background for the green and pink beads of the necklace.

It took me several tries to achieve that. The first few, of course, had beautiful sharp leaves and blossoms, with a vague green and pink blur in front.

Yesterday I was pleased that I had my camera to hand. The heavy rain brought a toad out onto the path in the back garden, and I wanted a photo of him. I had to shoot through the french window, and so I have several photos of a toad, overlaid with milky white raindrops.

Focus is a choice. I will concentrate on this thing, and not that. Last week, unexpectedly, I ended up at the pub with some colleagues. One of them said something about multi-tasking. 'Oh,' I said, 'I can't multi-task. I think it's a myth.'

She smiled and admitted that she can't, either, and proved the point a few minutes later: she was looking at something on her phone when somebody spoke to her. She only heard the third time.

When I talked about that necklace I made, I didn't say that I was trying to do it in front of the telly, watching the qualifying for the Chinese grand prix. Hopeless. I made a fantastic necklace, but the finer points of the F1 passed me by completely. I should have known.

One thing at a time. And yet. It is rare for me to do one thing at a time, at least for long. I can focus, but my focus gets tired. However, I can do a succession of things, flitting from one to another, and find after about three hours that I have made significant progress on a lot of them. A kind of roving focus, I suppose. After all, I'm not a camera. It's a lot easier for me to choose. A, and not B. Or, A and then B, and then C, and then D, until they're all done.

Camino de Santiago: Part 11

Ai Nostri Monti Ritorneremo (Virgen del Camino to Astorga, 20th - 23rd April 2007)

'The Shepherds, I say, whose names were Knowledge, Experience, Watchful and Sincere, took them by the hand, and had them to the tents, and made them partake of that which was ready at present. They said, moreover, We would that ye should stay here awhile, to be acquainted with us; and yet more to solace yourselves with the good of these Delectable Mountains. They then told them, that they were content to stay; so they went to their rest that night, because it was very late.'
Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan

The refugio kicked us out at eight on the dot, but since we intended to shake the dust of León from our feet as quickly as possible this was no great hardship. It did mean that we had to cut off Morning Prayer half way through; the Lord, we hoped, would understand. Having decided to take the longer, quieter route to Hospital de Orbigo, rather than walking alongside the road, we stopped in Chozas de Abajo and completed the service. It was a pleasant morning, not yet too hot, and we lazed on a bench there for a little while. The next settlement, Villar de Mazarife, was only 4.5km further on, and we arrived well before lunchtime. We could have carried on, but the next refugio appeared to be another 15km away, and, when the one here was in plain sight and had a row of sun loungers temptingly displayed on the front lawn... we found that we weren't feeling all that energetic.

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April Moon: Day 6

Nuance

What feelings does this word evoke? What sorts of memories does it recall? Which of your senses start to tingle? How would you represent what this word means to you?

Nuance feels like hard work. Tonight I look at the word nuance and think, oh, dear, I haven't got enough of those.

Perhaps it is just having finished what I have finished today, and immediately gone back to the beginning and started to read back through it, and found how lacking in nuance it is. It is good, but already I can see that things are missing, and that things are in there that do not need to be. It feels heavy-handed, slapdash. I can see where I have been lazy, and I can see where I have been clumsy.

Nuance is subtlety, delicacy, lightness, deftness; and I, having completed the biggest and most complex creation of my life, feel flat and heavy. I am pleased with it, but it is done and also not done. Nuance. There may be some more of that tomorrow.

April Moon: Day 7

Texture

What feelings does this word evoke? What sorts of memories does it recall? Which of your senses start to tingle? How would you represent what this word means to you?

This is a good word. I'm not particularly taken with it as a word - it feels a bit impersonal and clinical, much like text and textile - but what it means is all sorts of loveliness.

Dimensions. Heights and depths so close together that you can feel the difference through your fingertips. Differences absorbed at the same time. Shiny smoothness; softness; scratchiness. New-painted nails against my bottom lip (it has always been a good way to feel things: try it). Rough skin on the backs of my knuckles; close Guernsey wool; soft-ridged corduroy; draggy leather; smooth-polished wood; flawless glass, whose texture is almost a sound.

I have just realised the connection with tessitura - the weave of a piece of music, which is similar to the range, but a more helpful thing to know. The range tells you the top and the bottom, but the tessitura is more like the mode than the mean; it tells you what most of the music is like. (There is not a note in Hark the herald-angels, for example, that I cannot sing, but the tessitura is high, and it is exhausting.) Music is similar to objects, I suppose, and the texture of music is a similar all-at-onceness, except it isn't; it's a series of all-at-onces that run together. It happens in time, while conventional texture happens in space.

Dimensions.

Sometimes you absolutely have to look with your fingers.