photography

dark | side | thursday | thirtyseven

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

Do you have a dark side?

AJT_6650-EditOr, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so,  join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.

Over a period of 52 weeks, I am writing a story. A dark story that will unfold as the weeks pass. Each Thursday, at 13:00 UTC, I will post a new chapter. Each chapter will be exactly 500 words long, and will be accompanied by a photograph. You can catch up on the story so far by clicking here on dark | side | thursday

Share your dark side?

I invite you to join me either by writing your own dark story, week by week, or, if that is too much, by dropping by, now and then, perhaps when the mood suits you or, perhaps, when it doesn’t, and by sharing a photograph, poem or a suitably dark piece of prose. To cross over to dark | side | thursday create your post, tag it dark side thursday and link to it by clicking on the dark | side | thursday badge below, where you can also find all the contributions so far. Or you can simply share your link in the comments section of my weekly post. And, should the mood take you, you can add the badge to your post.

dark | side | thursday | thirtyseven

Blood rushed to his head.

His legs grasped in a firm grip, strong fingers encircling both calves, he was swaying. His eyes closed, tight, against the piercing white light. Fighting the nausea and trauma.

He felt the slap, cold, from the hand, the huge hand, striking his buttocks hard. He didn’t want to cry, didn’t want to show fear. But cry he did, one short, sharp, yelp, and his eyes opened, sticky, blinking.

He felt himself being spun round, not roughly, but still he imagined he was looping around inside a (far from) funfair ride.

And he was cold. Shivering. His body was damp, the air around him a stark contrast to the place from which he had been torn.

All around him was blurred. In that white light shapes moved, sometimes approaching, more often receding. Muffled voices. Machines humming, bleeping.

He was pushed down onto a firm surface covered in a rough white fabric. One of those huge hands loomed out of blurred white clouds and held his body down as another wrapped him tight in yet more of the rough white fabric. His arms pinned in front of him, his legs held tight together. Only his head left untouched. He tried to move, he could only manage slight turns of his head. He opened his mouth to speak, to demand an explanation, all he could manage was a pitiful mewling noise, not a single word could he form. Trying again, he succeeded only in making louder versions of the same mewling noise. The shadowy shapes around him moved closer. A huge face pressing down at him, dark eyes looking into his. He was lifted. Rocked from side to side, whilst dark eyes held him tight, making what he imagined dark eyes thought were soothing noises. They weren’t. Suddenly, in a swift vertigo inducing movement, he was placed back down on the white fabric covered surface.

Another shape approached. Holding something in its hands. The air around him thickened and his vision blurred as what seemed to be a plastic lid or tent was placed above and around him. Unable to speak, he decided to practice his mewling. Fitful mewling that this time appeared to elicit no response. He gave up. Struggled a little, trying to free himself, gave up. Again.

A hand lifted the lid, reached toward him and he felt a slim tube inserted into his nose. Air rushed in. More mewling. More struggling. Giving up, again, he managed to roll on to his side, still tightly bound.

Another shape approached him. Seeming smaller than the others. Less sure, less confident, less threatening. The shape reached out towards the roof above him. An arm resting on the blurred surface of the plastic. Fingers splayed out, pressing against the plastic, as if seeking to touch him. Unable to do so.

Again he heard those words ‘Don’t let them take him…’

The hand lifted away.

The light above flickered through the plastic, the surface below vibrated.

He was moving.

The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.

thirtyseven | fiftytwo

project 365 mobile | mono | square | week 32

| andy townend
i see
nuff said
two by two
time warp
that morning feeling
mind the gap
ride the morning wave

On Sunday, 14 June 2015, I launched my Project 365.

You can see all the images as they are posted, each day, to the mobile | mono | square album on my flickr account.

You can also browse all of my weekly updates ,which are posted each Sunday, here .

Desktopmms-Edit

optimistic

Image | | andy townend

not the one who takes up his bed and walks
but the ones who have known him all along
and carry him in –

miracle – seamus heaney

not so very long ago,
i bought, a book
of poems
because,
i still

believe
in

being, human

do
you?

for wordpress weekly photo challenge – optimistic

see also my optimistic take on belgianstreets

*shot with nikon d700 and nikkor 50mm af-s f/1.4G lens at ISO 900, f/1.4 and 1/125s mono applied in lightroom cc*

dark | side | thursday | thirtysix

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

Do you have a dark side?

AJT_6650-EditOr, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so,  join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.

Over a period of 52 weeks, I am writing a story. A dark story that will unfold as the weeks pass. Each Thursday, at 13:00 UTC, I will post a new chapter. Each chapter will be exactly 500 words long, and will be accompanied by a photograph. You can catch up on the story so far by clicking here on dark | side | thursday

Share your dark side?

I invite you to join me either by writing your own dark story, week by week, or, if that is too much, by dropping by, now and then, perhaps when the mood suits you or, perhaps, when it doesn’t, and by sharing a photograph, poem or a suitably dark piece of prose. To cross over to dark | side | thursday create your post, tag it dark side thursday and link to it by clicking on the dark | side | thursday badge below, where you can also find all the contributions so far. Or you can simply share your link in the comments section of my weekly post. And, should the mood take you, you can add the badge to your post.

dark | side | thursday | thirtysix

He was the man in black.

There was no going back. He had to fight back.

Back to what? Back in black? Or should he swear allegiance to the cowardly white. He had no damned idea. He floated in a none place, somewhere between here and there, not quite anywhere. Full of fear. Flags fluttering, symbols, colours, meaningless. All of it.

Floating.

And yet, he was damned if he was going to give in, not now. Not after all he had been through, not after all the endless circles he seemed to have circumnavigated, ceaselessly . In search of, in search of, what exactly? In search of her. The woman that had haunted him since that time long ago, that warm evening, that hole. In the ground.  The fake plastic flowers. Taking photographs. How much of what he could recall was real?

His mind curled into a virtual ball inside the walls of his polished skull, pulling deeper inside, tighter and tighter. Quivering deep inside him. Afraid of what, he could no longer remember.

Floating.

And then? Then it had all become confused. His dreams, his nightmares had converged, conflated, collapsed. He could no longer tell reality from fantasy, night from day. Life from death.

There had been flames, fierce burning flames, and old flames. Plates. Plates with bloodstained handprints, stairways and airways. Constricted airways. Hands held tight. Taunting, teasing, not wanted. Statues and towers. Flowers and towers. The tower of death. He had climbed. He had lost. His way. He couldn’t stay. Not welcome. His time had come, and passed away.

His mind clenched into a fist. A startled sphincter, repelling entry. The world, a tight hard ball, deep inside his empty skull.

Nursery rhymes. Adult crimes.

Janet and John. Humpty Dumpty. Snakes and Ladders. Beauty and the Beast. Jack and the Beanstalk. The Magic Roundabout. Winnie the Pooh. Gingerbread cottages. Wolves, with dripping fangs. Red haired beauties. Barbie, Ken and Action Man. Plastic threesome. Not so winsome.

White faces, and long white incisors. Howling at the moon. Stories, gory stories. Wrapped in candy, and spread with poison. Happy endings. Stories never ending. Frauds and fallacies. Favours and Quavers. Chuppa chups. Will o’ the wisps.

Out there. Sounds. Muffled, far away sounds. Booming and slurring.

Ahead of him, the light. Sirens calling. Sensuous and embracing. Come hither. Don’t dither. The light is right. Don’t fear, we have beer. And good cheer. Forget the pain. Don’t strain. Relax. Let go.

Pictures, words, fragments filled his mind, a showreel from hell, spinning, out of control.

Sound intensifying. A strident shrieking. A bell blaring. And voices, could those be voices? Really, in the land of the nonny nonny no. No.

Wrapped up tight, inside. He floated. The light pulled.

The voices entreating.

Rhythmic pulsing. Pushing and straining.

Resisting.

Tightening. Darkening. Sounds, becoming frightening.

The light approaching. Pushed to the light. Intense white light. No longer squeezed and confined.

And those words. Again. Squeezed into the light.

‘Don’t let him’

Lungs opening. He cried.

The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.

thirtysix | fiftytwo

changing seasons | v2 | one

Image | | andy townend

time may change me
but you can’t trace time
– changes, david bowie, rip

for changing seasons | cardinal guzman | v2

*shot with nikon d700 and nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens at ISO1250, 1/125s at f/1.4, lens correction applied in lightroom cc, no edits/filters*

poetry | 101 | rehab | roots

Image | | andy townend

Home’s where you go when you run out of homes.
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

Welcome to this week’s Poetry 1o1 Rehab Prompt.

My prompt is ROOTS.

This week, I have returned to my roots, or at least returned in a virtual sense through a collection of random memories of the place where I first became conscious.

I have been lucky, since then I have travelled far and wide. Yet, the echoes of long ago dreams, and nightmares, are never far away.

So, what do your roots mean to you?

of smoking chimney stacks
of green painted market stalls
of crumbly cheese, tripe, and onions
of foul smelling rivers

of windswept moors

of a red chair, that became too small
of ejector seats, deployed, in the surgery
of sweetie jars, all in a row
of sixpences, thre’penny bits, half crowns, and sovereigns

of windswept moors

of odds and sods, screws and nails
of rainy dark skies
of closed doors, closed hearts, closed minds
of spaceships, in closets

of windswept moors

of a marshal’s shiny star, they said it was real
of stone steps, push chair straps, and a broken nose
of water butts, deep, dark, repositories of long lost (toy) cars
of standing in the kitchen sink, to watch the steam train far below

of windswept moors

of coal fires, and coal sheds
of swings and slides
of snowflakes floating endlessly down from dark grey skies
of tiger and serpent, forever entwined

of windswept moors

of dank rhododendrons
of dreams and nightmares, wasps in curtains, statues in corridors
of incense and guilt, prayers and pain
of scuffed knees, thorny rose scratches

of windswept moors

of dandelion and burdock
of all things, bright and beautiful
of painted plastic caravelle, sausage, and chips
of salt and vinegar crisps

of windswept moors

of thunderbirds, captain scarlet, and rock snakes on mars
of trickling streams
of janet and john
of yetis and daleks, coal fired viewing

of windswept moors

of adventures climbing green wet walls, behind the shed
of walking by farms, hands held, one old, one young
of a big blue car with a bold white stripe
of biggles and (just) william

of windswept moors

of a (toy) cable car, exotic tales, faraway places
of bicycles and tricycles
of black and white
of library smells, pages (life) unfolding

of windswept moors (dark tales of what happened there)

of saying goodbye

of these,
i think, when remembering
my roots, and

the dreams, i had

poetry | 101 | rehab |  roots

You can link to your post in response to today’s prompt by leaving a comment on my post and / or by clicking on the poetry | 101 | badge below and leaving a link.

And you can also tag your post with Poetry 101 Rehab so that it shows up in the WordPress Reader.

Please feel free to copy and paste the badge across to your own post and your own site 🙂

2015_06_19_09504

More information can be found on my poetry | 101 | rehab page.

 

project 365 mobile | mono | square | week 31

| andy townend
walking’ in the cold
walking’ in the rain
walk on by
happy day
that feeling you get
some way to go
stripped

On Sunday, 14 June 2015, I launched my Project 365.

You can see all the images as they are posted, each day, to the mobile | mono | square album on my flickr account.

You can also browse all of my weekly updates ,which are posted each Sunday, here .

Desktopmms-Edit

qwerty / azerty

Image | | andy townend

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
― George Orwell, 1984

I think,

QWERTY

You think,

AZERTY

for wordpress weekly photo challenge – alphabet

and lucile’s photo 101 rehab

*shot with nikon d700 and nikkor f/1.4 50mm lens, mac and dell mixed in photoshop cc*

see also alphabet | belgianstreets

dark | side | thursday | thirtyfive

Image | | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge?  Are you open to sharing your dark side?   Then read on.

Do you have a dark side?

AJT_6650-EditOr, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so,  join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.

Over a period of 52 weeks, I am writing a story. A dark story that will unfold as the weeks pass. Each Thursday, at 13:00 UTC, I will post a new chapter. Each chapter will be exactly 500 words long, and will be accompanied by a photograph. You can catch up on the story so far by clicking here on dark | side | thursday

Share your dark side?

I invite you to join me either by writing your own dark story, week by week, or, if that is too much, by dropping by, now and then, perhaps when the mood suits you or, perhaps, when it doesn’t, and by sharing a photograph, poem or a suitably dark piece of prose. To cross over to dark | side | thursday create your post, tag it dark side thursday and link to it by clicking on the dark | side | thursday badge below, where you can also find all the contributions so far. Or you can simply share your link in the comments section of my weekly post. And, should the mood take you, you can add the badge to your post.

dark | side | thursday | thirtyfive

‘…realityytilaer

hisfingerssregnifsih…’

Melting into the wall, the white wall rippled, a stone flicking across a pond. Plink, plink, plink. His arm vanished in front of his eyes, sucked into the white wall, melting, dissolving, vanishing. Un-being. Words flickered in his mind, un-flickered, flickered again, brighter, coalesced, flared, bloomed and dissipated, words incoherent, yet full of meaning. Words he knew, word he had heard.

Before.

Her voice, fading, swirling, water flowing in antipodean swirls down a white drain. Swirling, straining, becoming. Nothing.

His arm had gone. The white wall approached his shoulder.  Enveloped his shoulder. Engulfed him. He felt older. Colder. The white wall took his head. He stopped thinking.

He was not older. Younger. Bolder. Smoulder.

He was now all white. Like the room, the wall, the whole world. The world as it seemed to him. White, not right, no, so so not right. He could not write. He had to be right to write, right?

No longer observing the world. He was, the world. White rippling waves coursed through him. Unfolding, spreading, tightening. Not frightening. Pulsating, enfolding, enclosing.

Memories of the black plastic mask hovering above his face, the tube in his throat. They thought he was out. They thought he was all white.

All around him, white.

And then. And then, the voice.

Her voice again. He closed his eyes, but it made no difference, all was white. There was no dark. No light. No wrong, no right. Only the white.

The pain in his arm, that familiar pain, flared and snaked through his incorporeal body.

‘Close the pod doors Hal’.

White, all around him, white.

Memories of films and books and plays and poems. All white. Words blurred into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters, chapters into books, books into lives. Lives into whiteness. Always the whiteness. Nowhere else. All was white.

Reality.

Was no more.

There was only the path through the white place.

And the cloying sweet smell, of the black mask.

Hovering.

Waiting.

He wanted the button, the sweet promise of being able to push the button. To unleash relief. To let all that whiteness suffuse him. Push the button.

He drifted away, through the whiteness. White walls, imperceptible, white walls closing in on him, taking his breath. Making him want, the black mask.

The man in black, lost in the white, wanted and needed the black mask. Needed to draw deep on the sweet dark promise of the mask. Needed to suck on the dark life inside, needed the dark infusion to balance the white confusion that suffocated and took him deeper, away, out, from all he knew.

Inside the white, a part of him, buried deep, knew he was losing his mind. Knew that the white illusion, that was growing inside, was no more than that, an illusion.

Like her.

Why, did it all come back to her. Why did she fill his mind. Obscure his thoughts.

He was the man in black. He feared nothing.

Only the white.

The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.

thirtyfive | fiftytwo