995 - A Toolkit

Late this afternoon, on the beach, I picked up a piece of polished sea-glass. It's from the base of a bottle, dark green and pitted to give a sheen of white, like crushed sugar, over the surface.

Found glass is part of my toolkit. The functional object shattered, then made smooth and more beautiful by the action of sea and sand. It reminds me of me, and when I'm feeling mordant gives me hope for Whitley. Two years ago I made fourteen figures out of wire, twisting the wire around pieces of found glass and leaving them throughout the town.

I left one on a perch above Whitley Bay Metro Station, sat above the flow of people into and out of the town, where it remained until work began on the front of the building and a steel and glass canopy, to the original station blueprint, was fixed into place. Someone took down the wire and glass figure, but maybe it wasn't needed any more...

My toolkit is a bit unorthodox: poetry and theology; photography and random acts of kindness; eye contact and walks about town; hard science, soft anarchy, and storytelling.

Mostly storytelling.