Tuesday, April 09, 2013




It is a mother with her two daughters nearly silhouette in front of a stained glass window.

For sometime I wondered if they were in a church the close proximity of the mothers body to her children.  Her body distracting her children so they are still and peaceful for church.  Yet her expression listening, a little lilt of the chin.

Her expression is listening, but she is else where.  Dreaming a lover, making a list of menu ideas for the week, are the clothes ready for school? Tumbling washing around inside behind a still listening face.

As I put down the lines and then begin to fill in the shapes with waxy pencil shading I thought about how I long to be her.  My last child too large to sit between my breasts, on my lap.  I prop the book up for her.  The mother bringing children up without Internet and small portable screens.  When time is like hot winds of summer afternoon, slow passing, penetrating, going no where, but everywhere. You, the house, the garden, the objects are all the same.  Everything moves slowly.

Now life is allocated to objects, to people, event appointments.  There is no temperature.  There is no suddenly falling into a timeless heated moment.

Make time for sex it is written in a magazine - you book yourself in for gym, or for your friends, book in sex too.

I made time pass in church as a young adolescent by recalling the thrills shooting through my body of kissing another the night before.  The dreams and lulls and spiking shocks up and down my body.  Eye rolling within.  Time could not stand still long enough to savour the secret of the night and the delicious way my body recalled and reacted.

How velvet, how hidden, how all encompassing but unspoken, unflushed on a wooden pew beside younger brother, sister, brother and father - a family of worship.

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