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Sunday 8.51pm
A weekend spent doing a "father-son activity" as my youngest would put it resulted in one of these - a trebuchet.
For a machine designed for destruction it does have an incredibly elegant action that I find quite hypnotic, and I am not the only one.
We spent the afternoon throwing walnuts across the garden.
If you fancy making one yourself, we used these plans but made it half size.
Whilst thinking about the spaces between words it suddenly occurred to me that there is a space that I had not noticed before. The one that surrounds me, that I live in. I can see the cupboard on the other side of the room but I do not notice the gap in between, my mind just leaps straight to what I see and starts thinking about it. Yet, like one of those optical illusional drawings, if I stop and concentrate the room kind of flips round and I can see the space defined by all the objects around me, the space that I move in, within which I am a void.
A good few years ago an artist had the same idea I think. She would cast and make solid the inside of a room and take it outside to stand on its own. I did not get it at the time, but I think I do now.
The space between people I notice much more. If I am talking with a stranger and the conversation dies away then that gap between us rises up and I feel an intense urge to close it by talking. Nervousness or shyness I suppose because the more I know someone the more at ease I am to be silent with them.
All of this is much more obvious in a city I think, where we are all jammed so much closer together. A trip on the tube (subway, metro . . .) or in an elevator becomes a dance of sorts as well pull in our personal spaces as close as possible and squeeze around and between each other.
And there is more. Having watched this talk on TED I now discover that all that I can see and feel is only a tiny part, 4% of what is there. The rest it seems is dark matter and dark energy that has been named, but nobody actually knows what it is . . .
Life is never dull because it is so big . . .
Saturday 8.06pm
I talk too much
Quite soon I’ll be doing a presentation to a group of people. It is part of a job interview and I have never done anything like this before. The thought is both scary and exciting - I’m quite looking forward to it. Now because it is something unknown, all sorts of thoughts are constantly going through my mind about what may happen. And these thoughts are also colouring what I see around me. For instance we went to the movies today and saw “Night at the museum 2”. Having not seen the first one I wasn’t sure what I was in for but it was great much better than I expected and well worth seeing. Aside from the film itself, and Amelia Earhart’s tight trousers, I found myself listening to the actors and the way they spoke and presented the script. And that is when I realised - I talk too much.
As you may know I love lettering, but just as important as the letters themselves, what makes them beautiful is the spaces between the letters and words - the way they all fit together. And today I finally saw that it is the same with speaking. The shape of the spaces between the words are just as important as the words themselves. It is the spaces that give shape, texture and colour to what you say.
So I’ll be trying to talk less from now on. And thinking about it this will have another benefit - the rest of you might get a word or two in as well . . .
Life is never dull when you have new challenges.
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