The Maze

On the subject of eery depressing photography which I have a passion, for I am reminded of how much I love Magnum photographer Donavan Wylie's award wining study of the former Maze Prison in Northern Island. Also known as Long Kesh designed around infamous H-Blocks the prison was built specifically for the internment of IRA prisoners when the British government decided to repeal the laws against imprisoning people without charge in the 1970's.

Hell's Gate

I was so moved by an article in the Daily Mail about an old Leper Colony that resides just a few hundred yards from New York City on an  abandoned island in the East River NYC.

The haunting quality of the images reminds me of Joel Sternfeld's photographic study of Hart Island an island again situated in the river that runs alongside Manhattan that serves as a public burial ground for the city's unclaimed corpses.

The Island is unassessable to the public as it is run by the NYC's correctional facilities who's inmates are charged with the interment of forgotten and unwanted bodies into the mass graves that populate the Potter's Fields. The picture below is the grave of the first child to die of AIDS in NYC in 1985.

Abandonment Issues

Our fu*king Blackbree ain't working. It's been dayz........

Visions Of You

I had to venture into Mysteries of Covent Garden to buy some altar candles for my full moon ritual tonight. I have mixed feelings about that shop, they have a good selection of candles, incense and the odd decent book. Unfortunatley they also have 3 tons of 'angel cards', meditation cd's and vulgar new age tat to wade through before you get to it. They also have the most inefficient staff in town, ringing through items seems to take ages, they stare at the till like they are deciphering Coptic text and worse they offer readings...

I must confess at this juncture that I have actually been driven so insane by my own neurosis that I have had a reading at Mysteries. Years ago though, before I started to take responsibility for my feelings  and before I embarked on the path to emotional solvency. It was a terrible reading and a waste of money that I didn't really have since that was part of the problems I was somehow hoping that the reading would solve.

Yesterday there was this truly pathetic woman standing by the till waiting for her reading. Her energy was revolting actually, countenence spineless, confusion and self pity emanated from her emaciated frame. As I waited in line (for 20 fucking minutes) I considered saving her £35 and offering her the benefit of my experience seen and unseen. I would have said this.
1. You are a woman and a universe of life and death resides within you
2. He is not coming back
3. Eat something
4. Remember who you are
5. Find God
6. Rise the fuck up

At the risk of sounding familiar

There is this super friendly cat in Pheonix Gardens where I walk my dog. He sits with the people who come there and even seems to want to play with the dogs. My dog looks a little side eyes at him when he comes close but then she has never been a friendly creature unless people have food.

He is a really emotionally open cat, quiet a rare thing.

The priests at St Giles apparently used to give a last drink to convicts being lead from New Gate prison towards the gallows at Marble Arch. The Tyburn gallows (used between the 12th and 18th century) stood at the junction of Oxford Street and Edgeware Road and was constructed so that it would be big enough to facilitate mass executions. The largest of which involved the simultaneous hanging of 23 men and 1 woman on 23rd June 1649.
Obscene.