writing
It seems throughout all of the toing and froing in our conversation between the things that are holding us intellectually, and those that are affecting us emotionally and physically (not that these can really be separated ~ certain threads shimmer.

Fine, delicate, webs made visable with liquid dew, catching the light of various repeating urgencies.From where I am standing, coloured by my own ongoing preoccupations, desire (wanting, longing, aching, needing) and distance (inbetweenness, gaps, wide spaces, opening up~ distances both of space and time) , as intertwined realities, glint strongest, weaving through it all.

We returned to words about water and light repeatedly, the reassuring steadiness of following a course you trust is the truest once comes closer to the river than in does to any road or forest trail.
The illusive way light dances on water, both wholly there and present, but always moving changing and beyond possible grasp ~ this is desire and distance.

The path, the journey, jumping on a bike to be in the right place with the light, wanting to let go of solidity and be a pool of vulnerability, the syrupy thickness of attraction in the air when the gap between two people cannot be closer, and the way their energies pull at one another from a distance is palpable, fearing fickleness in her wants and desires, feeling like there is still so much to be uncovered and learned about one another ~ these are desire and distance.

The impossibility of ever being able to close a distance, having to learn to hold the distance between you and the thing/person/place. The conflicting desire of wanting to both hold and close a distance. Of wanting to communicate wholly with another person and of wanting to hold yourself separate and apart from them.

In 2017 in the RHA I washed a circle into one of the studio windows, there were many sorts of reasons which were clear then and have faded with time. Those initial reasons are no less important now, for they needed to be there to bring it into being, but thinking back on it I can only read it through my current position

From this current position it feels to me that washing that window was a way to handle a certain kind of longing. To try and possess the view they held, to make it mine in some way whilst still allowing it to fuction and exist completely apart from and without me. Today I repeated that action in my bedroom, and washed a circle into the window. It is feint, hard to see, almost impossible to photograph. It is there and not there.

It allows me to own my relationship to the world beyond the window, close the distance by making my view of it clearer, but maintain it as away and independent of me. Because it is the part that exists outside of, away from and independent of us that we often fall in love with the most. That which we never can and never will hold, and the closest we can come to finding calmness within it, is letting ourselves hold that distance.


I’ve spent all my given hours.
Poured my longing into time
for bobbing coins that tease upon the surface.

They glisten as they wink at me
And I am tortured.

I drove a hand in
to collect a few,
But they dissipate at my touch

I’m greedy for their grasp;
to feel their presence in my palm
The absence of that i’ll never hold
makes me weep

The weight of wanting
tickles my finger tips

A lingering longing
Sits itself within the hollow.

Then without apology
The riches i sought after
Reveal themselves again

I’ll leave them be, this time.



cara farnan
emma brennan
jennifer moore
water love poem