Poems

Ode on Perec’s Species of Spaces

Oh Frenchman, oh writer
Oh experimentalist, wizard o’er word play
with Einstein-inian hair, turtleneck and wild eyes.
You write to the masses
call upon them
to see the beauties of the world.
Gems in the dirt, faces in the ceiling decor, shapes in the clouds.

Content to breathe your native air
on your corner in Paris, an idealised space,
listing the buildings, the people, the passers by and the amblers.
The number of trees on a street in Montmartre,
the direction of the bus, its stops, the colour of the drivers shirt.

You are fascinated by the spaces, the places
our bodies occupy, what is closest to us,
so close we forget the very existence of it.
How do we see what we have come not to?

You ask us what is new, what is old,
your writing booms off the page,
cascading down the streets of the everyday.
Letters fall on gutters and paving stones, bounding and bouncing like rain drops,
the shine from the letter-shaped droplets highlights a detail we didn’t see before,
and you show us how to rediscover the familiar.

Rediscover a confusing world we can only hope to take in with our eyes, cover with the soles of our feet and try to understand.
To begin with our space, our proximal norms
to which we have the power to rewrite the narrative of,
to appreciate the consistency of the coffee shop workers, and the bus drivers, the sun skimming the surface of the water in the park,
and the bird that nests in your neighbor's porch.


-----

Spaces

We live in spaces, in between places,
of routine, normality, obviousness.
The struggle of the everyday
and the placid milieu.

Streets, buildings, apartment blocks and bus stops.
Public parks and cocktail bars, pavements, double yellow lines and shopping trollies.

It is easy to feel the distance,
strangers in the waiting room, circling one another
playing a game of astronauts.
Childhood pastime rollplay.
We sit in these regions of kindness,
and coldness,
observing this world we call home,
standing together, yet also alone.

So maybe you’re going too fast.
Normality is the realm of the abnormal,
take a closer look.
We circle the sun, day in day out.
Shadows are never the same, forever changing.

Notice how your space changes, frequent the local coffee shop.
Discover what you have yet to see.
Rediscover the familiar, the rehearsed.
A kaleidoscope of light, painted on the floor
just for you.
A shared secret you can be privy to
should you be paying attention.

Pay attention.
Look, see, observe, live, be, sit, exist, inhabit, dwell, discover, rediscover, think, ponder, investigate, question. Please.

Time moves like water leaking through a child’s fingers.
To observe, to try meticulously to be present in the here, the now,
your normal, your everyday.

Look at the bus stop, the parking lot, the window frame of houses and shadows on the street.
The number of flowers in the vases in your favourite coffee shop, the flame of a candle and its dancing light, the people on the street and the way your washing hangs in the wind, a forest of white sheets.

“Note down what you can see. Anything worthy of note going on.
Do you know how to see what’s worthy of note?
Is there anything that strikes you?
Nothing strikes you.
You don’t know how to see”

Georges Perec, Species of Spaces


-----

Airport.

If you are in the airport
You are somewhere
And nowhere
All at once
Nameless faces
Nameless spaces
Bright advertisements of far away places
Escalators that are flat
Not up
And long, plain corridors.

You may flick through newspapers
Feeling thin newsprint become worn
With every turn
You’re not really reading.

Departure boards
Arrivals hoards
Faces you may never see again
The possibility of chance encounters.
Exciting!

On the plane
Strangers pull in their legs in crowded aisles
And say bless you
Hiding dirty looks.
Throw away politeness.
Bless you meant something once.

Near yet distant
We sit in regions of kindness
And coldness
Together in space
For the same purpose
Same destination
Yet you may never know your neighbors name.

And so, in this airplane
We observe this being human
Here
Standing together,
alone
In this non place, space,
far from home.


----


Everyday-ness

Simple or unpoetic language
Masking tape
Plain a4
Water
Party balloons
White light
Elements of the everyday

Investigations into common place phenomena
The ambiguity of everyday stuff
Becomes the subject
What size
What shape
Material
A thoughtful celebration of the ordinary.

-----

Astronauts and satellites

We live in a world
Where history feels as if
At our heels.
How to make sense
Of all this space
When i feel so small

Our need to understand
The whole of the present
Makes it hard
To give meaning
To the recent past

We distance ourselves
Humankind
Strangers in the waiting room
Playing a game of astronauts
Childhood pastime roll play

We circle one another
Like satellites
Alone but together
Searching in the darkness
For connection
Floating
In the fleeting
And the temporary