Weird weather day;The clouds are moving so quickly that the sky is empty blue again before the drops
Weird weather day;The clouds are moving so quickly that the sky is empty blue again before the drops of rain begin to spatter around meEarlier on in the café basement of the National College of Art and Design, where we were visiting the graduate exhibition, I felt a tickle on the back of my neck that could only be a living thing, and I reached my fingers back and groped gently, expecting them to return bearing a small spider, but it was actually an ant. I dropped her to the floor, and felt instantly a little sad, having separated her from everything she needs to go on. Is it better to kill an ant than to separate it from its colony?Helene posted a selection of the work we saw on Instagram. I don’t know why I am so particularly excited and enlivened by the graduate exhibition, which we go to every year we can, and which currently, magically sits 300 metres from our home. To see the many products of a year of focussed, uncommercial design work is a great, fun, inspiring privilege. There is so little that is very good, but it’s so rewarding to witness the attemptLater we went to a food market that intersected with Street Feast, a newish national festival day where people organise food parties in their local communities. We bought some food from the market and also ate some of the free food provided by the festival. The rain started as the organisers began a series of small speeches on the passive brutality of Direct Provision. Asylum seekers in Ireland are dropped into a years-long processing system where they are given accommodation, but are unable to work or even cook for their families, eating industrially prepared meals in communal settings like prisoners. For years. For many years. We have so many fucking things to be ashamed of. The short, positive, unsentimental speech was delivered just as I lit into a bowl of homemade daal and warm bread, and it was acutely affecting and I appreciated the sting. The rain grew heavier and heavier until the marquees began to sag and slosh water onto the picnic tables. Everyone moved inside. It was sunny again ten minutes later. Helene is cooking dinner nowPictured is the rubber plant that is our greatest plant success but also by far—by far—our greatest labour. I carry it outside into the sun every bright day of the summer, carry it back inside before dark. In spring and autumn I nudge it, when I’m home for the day, across the kitchen floor, giving it as many minutes as possible in the moving slant of sunlight. In return it has tripled in size, and I celebrate each leaf splitting its cocoon like its a new birth. The workload is absurd, and yet I perform it unthinkingly at this point, unable to weigh it with any kind of objectivityIt would feel very strange to write more loosely about my life like this more regularly, but would probably also be quite good for me,. -- source link