Zineb Sedira - 2 Photographs

صورتي مكسورة 8

 صورتي مكسورة

صورة لابني في عيد ميلاده في عام ١٩٩٥

                            
الان صورة مكسورة

صورتي مكسورة لان المطر دخل الى شباك

احبت هذه الصورة جدا

Peaceful --- In the house --- No noise --- It's been so long --- All these months of rushing around --- It feels unreal

No more rushing - We have time to talk to each other

Moving slowly - We can ask just one question at a time

Taking my time - We wait for the kettle to boil

One thing at a time - We went and did some digging in the front garden

Time to take photos - Let my sore feet rest after hours dancing

Photos and doing maths in the kitchen

Waiting for the photos to turn up in my email inbox. My plan is to be able to change my profile pictures once a month. All I need is enough photos to choose from.

Avalanche of poems (2nd pic added)

From above my desk to down by the cables on the tiles. This is how the sheets fell out.

Scaffolding - Silent movie - Dead end at the Bodleian

My phone takes photos in the dark, so I have 2 of the scaffolding by our back door to add to this post.

Doesn't this remind you of ballet classes? I like the unplanned arrangement of the chairs too.

I also took a silent one handed movie of the things around me at this desk. I might do one of my other desk later. H did things in the kitchen on video, but I can't put that here. He said I sounded like my mother when I played it back.

I want to have a look at Arabic manuscripts, so off I go to the Bodleian. I'd have had more joy from going to the local garage! I did tell myself not to expect too much. It's annoying to be treated as if I had two heads yet again. After that I lurked in my own Department library in the basement and felt more human. On-line manuscript collections seem to be the new thing:

Wellcome Institute

Oxford Bodleian,

Univ of Michigan

Now to actually identify the oldest manuscript in each collection and start from there. I might eat that round chocolate as a prize once I get into one of these sites properly.

Ok, this one is from the 10th century. Now I need someone to answer my questions.

See how the manuscript, a set of pages like a little book, has been photographed from all 4 sides as an object in itself, pages 12 - 15.

I could read herdha and fi ulm on the top line of the first page, but using google translate hasn't helped me with both new words, only one. See the gobbledegook in the middle there.

Christmas Eve - Angels - Snow

Christmas Eve walk to deliver more cards. Ginger wine with friends in front of their log burner. Explaining 10 to the minus 9, bit by bit. Many different concepts to be explained with my hands in the air and simple words. An amazing still night, trees dark against the last light in the west. The moon partly lit and partly almost invisible. Wood smoke from someone's fire. Steamed up windows in the pub. Total silence.

Midnight Mass, I sat there thinking and wondering why wanting to be fair and kind gets tangled up with a thicket of words. The best bit was singing the carols and greeting all the people I know. Familiarity. Also the gaps, all the people who aren't there.

The photo display on the window sill above my angels is just visible. My parents plus my brother and me. I wonder why my grandfather came over that evening to take a formal photo of us all? My father would have set up the camera on a tripod for him to click.

My mother in law plus all her brothers and both parents, shortly before her mother died in 1939. The other one on the right is my father in law, whom I never met. T and H take turns looking a bit like him as they grow and change.

These little angels were made by my grandmother R ages ago. I assume when my mother and her brother were small. They have survived all this time in 2 boxes which originally held headed writing paper. There are little foil twists, an old version of tinsel, plus see-though plastic icicles and small baubles to hang from the now-vanished small silver tree.

The lacy covers over the coloured paper dresses are made from paper doilies from all those years ago. Very delicate. No one else touches them, only me.

The star, just visible behind the gold bobbles, is cardboard covered in silver and gold foil. The pointy shaped bits are so delicate, but miraculously are still intact. Again, no one else is allowed to touch them for fear of tearing them. Actually, no one has even breathed a word about wanting to get close to them. I have defended them with my life.

And snow. We have the noise of wind tonight, but no snow whatsoever. There is some at uksnow.