02
There’s The Wind Outside
There’s the wind outside.
I sit by the window and peer through the gaps of the white swirls, smudges, and curls. The window is coated in chalky waves and painty smears, blocking the view but not the light from outside. In these lines I see the movement of the wind.
There’s wind outside and I sit and view it from with-in. I orientate my body in the words (of this wind). I feel its physicality- a breeze, a soft touch and tickle on my forehead. Ahead, I watch it take up space.
Navigating the world of this wind, I look to a gate left ajar. Chocolate wrappers and fallen leaves push against it, passing through the holes and gaps but catching the lines between. It creaks and sways—metal hitting metal, brick walls, terrace houses, and gates ajar.
I look up to the roof. Chattering tiles flutter—tipple topples just over the edge, and now there’s a gap where things can come in.
It blows and it falls.
The domestic returns from that wind: “The tiles that fell, the gates left open, the bins fallen over.” An intervention of disrupted paths. You think of a seagull and a fox, dash—in this troublesome wind. I follow it now along the street, skip, dance the packet of crisps- its contents spewing and flying before it crumbles. Crunch beneath my foot- the lightness of them carried the crumbs trodden in.
A gush, and it blows your skirt. It’s a romantic moment, a polite flutter, a giggle, a blush. Your hair now distracted and tangled across your nose. Blustery days with hair and shopping bags. They move swiftly, and sweep up with the wind. They twist in hand, tangling be-tween your fingers, leaving red tight marks. I’m chilly, a scarf wrapped, continues to wind itself around my neck and run off with the wind.
I blow my nose red and drop a tissue. You chase, run, trip to catch it up, and it tosses and turns, textures and layers are revealed. I chase it, trip, stumble. The tissue, dropped and caught in the wind. The wind makes me see weight. A power, a force. The heavy door on my way out of the building crashes into my thighs when my hands are full. You lean in to lend a hand, push through with great force to be blasted back, skin and clothes wrap tight. The door slams behind you- loud, sigh. I think about the wind on the edge. When you’re at the top- the tip, on the verge of objects known in this space. When it hits the tree and now that tree now grows with this wind, leaning in and leaning back.
Go on touch the wind. Let yourself be touched and swayed by it. The disruption of the wind, on the top of the hill, where it topples those around. Its breezy, gentle, gusty.
I watch the wind strike the net. It passes through the holes and gaps but dances with the strands between. Its pattern like the cage of a fan, the repetition of roof tiles, waves rippling in. The textures whisper to the wind and I now see rubbings of the tarmac. I request an act of transfer from this wind, and it gives. Bite. There’s a takeaway container I’ve watched get more squashed on the road, on my cycle home. The road beneath and tyres above transfer-ring textures onto the aluminium foil. You think about peeling it up and the smoothness de-spite the textures. You think it would slip and glide if it was to be caught in the wind now.
A dead butterfly squashed to the tarmac beneath on a hot and blustery day. Did it die in the air and float down to its death or was it squashed? I photograph the butterfly like a rubbing. You see its shapes and textures, a result of this guster.
You walk down the alley beside the road. Smells pour out of the vents, and you feel the warm, festering air sweat your face. They murmur and waft at something else- They’re a different sort of wind now. The sound sweeps over you. You see it like me.
Continue, stop.
Still
I think of a Moth
Section 1
There’s The Wind outside
Section 2
Sail Away
Section 3
Archive
Section 4
Studio 19c, Spike Island
Bristol
BS1 6UX