Verdigris

Seems to me there's been something autumnal in the air the last couple of days, even though it's only July. Leaves are falling. Rhu churchyard is the perfect place to savour that elegiac mood. Lots of worthy people buried there, old graves, young deaths, stories and mysteries. It's a beautiful place and very peaceful. Blip paradise in the changing seasons.

Today I was drawn to traces of unintended decay. This is a wooden pole, bound with copper in the form of rope. It must have looked splendid a hundred years ago, marking off a famous person's plot. Today the copper has split and the wood inside a home and feast for insects, the verdigris dripping onto the marble beneath tinting everything bright turquoise.

I spent an hour there this afternoon beneath rumbling thunder and the threat of rain. The first time for ages that I've really gone deeply into a blip-trance, drawn into an awareness of the constant cycle of life and death moment by moment by the images around me, jumping out of my skin each time the clock-tower marked the quarter.