maggi dawn

trees

I love trees. They inspire me, make me feel good to be alive. I love them in winter, when they stand stark against a pale sky. I love them at twilight when they look full of secrets. In the spring when the light yellow green leaves begin, the freshness of that colour seems full of promise and hope. In the summer the sheer abundant lushness of great boughs of green and red and brown is enough to drown in. In california once I lay underneath a grapefruit tree in a friend's garden, and took about a hundred photos all at different angles.

In the park where I take my son to play there are enough different trees to keep a photographer as well as a tree-climbing boy very happy indeed.   

We went over to Burghley the other day, back when the sun was shining, where there is a sculpture garden and the new Garden of Surprises, both of which have astonishing art installations set among trees, making you see the landscape in a completely different way.

The artist who set these strange figures up on a branch must love trees too, I think.

The Art of Travel

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train... Of all the modes of transport, the train is perhaps the best aid to thought: the views have none of the potential monotony of those on a ship or a plane, they move fast enough for us not to get exasperated but slowly enough for us to identify objects. ..

At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves - that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, but who may not be who we essentially are.

Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel, 57-59

Edward Hopper, Compartment c, Car 293, 1938

Thelma and Louise

Who would I choose to take on a Thelma and Louise road trip?, Howard asked yesterday.

Well, I can think of a few people that would be interesting.

Cyber person: Jen Lemen. We keep planning to meet IRL, but haven't achieved it yet. But I have a hunch that we would have enough to talk about, and enough in common, to have a wild road trip.

IRL: if this road trip was in the USA, I'd take Lilly Lewin. For all the same reasons as Jen.

Fantasy person: Bill Bryson, of course. Who else? He would point things out I wouldn't otherwise notice, and make me laugh every ten minutes.

Not in a hundred years person: My friend Henry, who is devoted to getting lost deliberately in foreign places because it's "more interesting". I have got lost with Henry in Israel, North Wales, North Essex, Northumberland, and one or two other places before now. But a USA road trip - way too big to get that lost. I love him to bits, except when he refuses to read the map...

Who would you take?

kentucky

well, Kentucky was a blast. 32 hours travel for 34 hours on the ground... but so, so worth it.

I met some fab people: it was one of those events where I had the privelege of being able to BE useful to a few people, but also had a handful of conversations that left me feeling fed/intrigued/challenged. Joseph Myers is an expert in the field of communication skills, and a lengthy conversation on all the areas that cross over - me on language in theology, him on language in communication - left me with a pile of new things to think about. Brian McLaren is just as nice as everyone says he is (and I mean that in a good way), Doug Pagitt is also v. nice, and v. v. tall. MR Lilly Lewin (Rob) is another tall man with whom I enjoyed good conversation. Also met various bloggers - Will, Corey, Tim, Spencer, Paul ... and reconnected with Jason (who only lives down the road here in the UK, but nice to see another Brit there!) and more, too many to recite them all. And had a couple of clear hours with Lilly to catch up. (Various people have blogged notes about the event - Emerging thinkers who weren't there might like to read the links at Lilly's blog.)

Wilmore is lovely (dry country, but I won't hold that against it) - I knew Kentucky was big, but I never knew it would be so charming. It has a kind of beauty of its own - not quite the South, but almost, it has huge Scarlett O'Hara style farm mansions surrounded by vast acreages of horse farms, all fenced with white fences. Like Newmarket, only ten times the size.  I thought I could happily stay in Wilmore for a couple of weeks - the blossom was out, the sun was shining, and it's the kind of place where you just automatically SLOW DOWN.  And - get this - I actually ate my lunch at the Whistlestop Cafe. No Fried Green Tomatoes, unfortunately, but it was near enough.

Just before I boarded my plane home I watched the sun going down over an immense expanse of American horizon. I felt a huge urge NOT to climb on the plane, but instead hire a car and drive. Just knowing that this was country where you can drive for days and days fills you with a sense of freedom that is unique to countries this big (Australia has the same effect, and although I've never been to Canada, I imagine it's much the same). In England if you drive all day, even from tip to toe, you run out of land. One day maybe I'll do a big road trip.

I only seem to get around to jumping on a plane about once every 12 months or so, but despite the brevity of this trip, it did me a power of good. Thanks to Brian, Rebecca and Laci, who did such a fab job of dreaming up the conference.

mint julep

It's springtime in Kentucky, and the sun is shining.

Lilly Lewin gave me this recipe for Mint Julep - a Kentucky speciality,sepcially associated with the Kentucky Derby. I have to say it looks like the Kentucky equivalent of a Pimms - a curious English summer fruit punch made of lemonade, cucmbers, fruit and Pimms, which (IMHO) tastes like kids' cough mixture - sweet and very sticky and vaguely medicinal.

As far as Mint Julep goes, I don't usually drink bourbon. But I do make a point of trying as many as possible of the local customs wherever I go. I have smoked a hookah in Cairo, eaten horsemeat in Europe, drunk my tea without milk in Germany, eaten raw fish in Holland and whalemeat in Norway, and became completely addicted to Fritsaus (mayonnaise) on my chips in Amsterdam. So I think a mint Julep will be entirely in order - but after my session, not before! I know it's a requirement of the job that Anglican priests can hold their drink, but judging by Lilly's recipe, I'm not sure I could talk sensibly after a Mint Julep.

dream a little

sometimes when I'm a bit weighed down with the long dark winters,

I look at this picture and dream a little