Local Image #115

20 June 2024

Self-portrait at 13, from a school photograph. Messy. Radiating blue brushstrokes around me that form a spiky exterior, like a cactus. Ghostly blue figures hovering or rising around me. Rough. Red and blue.

A microwave turning over like a washing machine. Spiritual imagery of a modern type; modern spiritual imagery that struggles to stay secular. The spirituality of evolution and chance: what if randomness itself were a spirit without pattern, or seemingly so - there is pattern, but it is beyond our capabilities of detection?

She will become Morgana. The Winter King and the pagan tales of King Arthur and Merlin. Dumnonia. Druids and I. At 13, I officially turned my back on the old gods, but they did not go away. I see some of them intertwined within my protective shield. An owl at my head. I see this intertwining in the rest of my family too. Many have turned their backs on the Christian God.

Pillars of fire and water rise amidst misty mountains, representing gaps in my mind and the search for fitting shapes and meanings among the peaks.