sixty-eight

The Royal Observatory is currently showcasing the winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2010.

A Perfect Circle by Dhruv Arvind Paranjpye

Paranjpye's photograph shows an annular eclipse, which occurs when the moon is too far from the earth to completely cover the sun (as happens in a total eclipse).

This is such an amazing image. I love how the wispy, formless clouds - lit like they were painted by Turner - obscure the bright, hard circle of the sun.

Like many of the other astronomical photographs, I find this simultaneously compelling and unsettling. I can hardly believe that that pale ring is our sun - and then, that something so bizarre as the sun actually exists. I like being encouraged to see something to which I had grown (too) accustomed - the sun, space, stars and planets - as novel and weird and amazing again.

It is easy for the world to become a habit.

I am also reminded of a particular Rodchenko painting, Composition no. 61:

Rodchenko was inspired by images from old science books, and this one certainly has the feel of the moon and the sun, of eclipses.

fifty-seven

Some things that are on my body today:

Some sounds that are on my speakers (with an eerie hypnotic homemade video, i love you tube):

fourteen

it has snowed too much recently. days were all cold feet and slipsliding journeys to the library; a nice white pavement turned to mudslush by nine in the morning. and when the snow eventually stopped, then came rain and wind like wolfbites. sigh. i want days that feel a bit like treacle sponge pudding, please. i want days that feel more like this:






p.s. my girlfriend is supertalented with a camera.